MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: Why are we so obsessed with friendship?
and a semi-unhinged BTS of Luce and I writing this book and being best friends
Hi crushes!! Bel back here again! Reporting live from mainlining fizzy water in a small heatwave in Lisbon, while Luce is off touching grass and being an IRL she-e-shan’t for the next month and having a holiday.
Taking you on another Make It Make Sense takeover chime this week because, well, we thought it was probably time we told you a bit more about, um, the BOOK we’re releasing in September?!
Before I begin: Where to pre-order your copy of our book in the UK!
You can do it through the angels at Waterstones, and you know what, you might just be in to get some cute shit along with it!! But we can talk about when Luce gets back off the road and stops having to video call me from beside a lake <3
Why we’re so obsessed with friendship
Some days, my newsies to you are (trying to be) funny. Some days, they’re softcore philosophy. Some days, they’ve even been a bit heart-pouring-out-of-my-chest about a topic that’s close to the bone and a bit Dido (White Flag, ‘I will go down with this ship’). And some days, I can’t stand to try be smart anymore and just want to be earny.
(Earnest).
This is how I feel about friendship.
And I know Luce feels the same, and I know anyone who subscribes to this newsy feels it in some way, too, and that’s why we wanted to write a whole chapter about it in our book.
It’s also how SYSCA started, which is a fkng gorge story about doing things you enjoy with people you love, and not being solely motivated by money, but what can come from the time we spend with the people we care about.
Here are some other takes:
We all just want to mythologise our feelings now home ownership and preventing climate change feel so unattainable
In recent years (I’m going to say specifically five), friendship has taken on its whole new level of lore. We’re cutting hype reels of our holidays to document it, using recordings of our WhatsApp voice notes to make songs about it, or just using the echo chamber of the internet to make living testaments about our friends in case anyone was wondering what we were up to on our weekend.
It’s an ironic tension that we’re now in a loneliness endemic, but visually happier and more connected than ever.
The small moments in friendship now actually seem really massive
Lol DMs. Something left at your front door. Honestly just someone remembering your birthday now no one’s on Facebook getting reminded anymore. Someone borrowing something and knowing you’ll get it back. Wasting time. Losing track of time. Forgetting what’s making you feel weird all afternoon because someone’s helping you to without even trying. Coexisting (going around alongside each other without talking). Niche references. Holding something heavy while the other one moves.
We spend so much time watching the world through other peoples’ lenses that when small moments of friendship togetherness happen to us, they feel more remarkable than they used to. Documenting them, and celebrating them makes us and life which is increasingly difficult to predict, feel more meaningful.
Who you spend your time with determines who you are
We acknowledge here that we both run friendships with a certain level of intensity.
For me, they’re how I know about devotion, and healing, and what love can look like and on a broader level, give me visions of myself I can’t clearly see on my own. It’s like… how else would I be able to see that about myself?
We know this isn’t everyone’s experience. If you’re really close (geographically or emotionally) with your family, or immediate community, maybe the sphere of your life is full enough, and you don’t need others around to fill out your pie graph. Or you don’t want many friends, or you find making them really difficult.
I think about this every time we get messages from people who are like, ‘this is not my experience of friendship at all, and I can’t relate to anything you’re saying.’
But each week, every day, every hour of my writing life, I’m writing about the world burning, trying to change a group of peoples’ behaviour to do something better, trying to make something beautiful and interesting for the world that’s sucked into a permaweirdcrisis.
Yet one of the most frequently asked questions in our weekend advice newsy, any AMAs I do or any DMS from strangers I get are about friendship: I love the way your friendships look and sound — how do I get that for myself?
How to be a good friend:
(It’s very hard to write these lists and not sound like a pseudo internet therapist, but hey, maybe that’s my calling)
Tell your friends you love them. Not enough in this world is cute enough to celebrate. This is. Don’t be weird about it.
Know the walls of your friendship. Like, don’t get mad that your married friend with children doesn’t have enough time to sit on your bedroom floor and go through every item of your wardrobe to determine whether it’s really ‘you’.
Send drunk funny messages like you would a crush.
Put your headphones on while you’re walking somewhere and call them, listen and ask questions about their life the whole way home.
Work or make cute shit with them (lol, what can we say).
Send them memes and support.
Be generous, but not at your own expense.
Have an anything friend that you can send your most unhinged, random, insane, vulnerable things to and know they will always reply in the exact way you need them to:
Do things together that aren’t just dinner and a movie. Go over to each others’ houses in hoodies, hungover, or sad, or angry, or tired, or having not yet gone home from last night and let each other see the unguarded version of you.
Make rituals of cute things you do/talk about/share, and let those build meaning in your life.
On a boring Sunday, make them a collaborative playlist of songs you can all/both add to and play whenever you feel lonely.
Some friendships are good at going away somewhere with. Some aren’t. Don’t end it if it’s the latter.
Treat friendship as a fluid, moving thing, that’s likely to change just the way you are right in this very minute.
Make friends with people older than you. They are some of the best friends I own.
All of this is to say that I love you all like a friend (clingy? Who cares), j’adore all your messages, and never want to overstate the effect you’ve had on my own friendships, understanding of platonic love and belief in what’s possible.
And with that,
[Luce note] this is how I felt editing this newsy:
friendship rules. i’d be utterly lost without it.
Beautiful. I'm obsessed with both of you. The friendships you have in your 20s are so special. They're your first family. I have kids so my friendships have really changed but they're still the same in a lot of ways. For example I have an almost decade old group chat with three of my girlfriends called Fuckin' Sar-tay and when we make a satay, we put a photo in there saying I'M MAKING A FUCKIN' SAR-TAY! Nothing else goes in that group. I hope we're still contributing to it in our 90s.