Friendship (?) ...

I’ve had awareness of the term “friendship” for a long time. My grandfather told me only once that there’s no such thing and I never forgot it. Intellectually, I’ve thought it’s probably a one-way experience, that the experience of friendship is about how “good” of a friend I can be regardless of reciprocity. I’m not sure that’s how I feel about it though. I can see how direct reciprocity is never needed in a friendship. There’s definitely no expectation for something to happen as a result of acting as a good friend. But it seems that there are inherent expectations within the very definition of friendship of some things not to happen. Those are hard. And so it may be true that a friendship does not need tit-for-tat checks and balances. Yet it’s also true that, just like oranges are not the product of apple trees, some actions are just not within the framework of friendship.