I keep returning to stories like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon driving 4000 km for each other not as some romantic thought - but because it sets a benchmark most of us never reach. I also think about someone who stood at the door of an examination hall for me to help me out - I was stupid enough to wake up late. I ask myself at what level of inconvenience. I juxtapose this thought with those we've called friends who couldn't be arsed to even try out or friends that make every little request no matter how small or inconsequential feel like an inconvenience.

It's important not to get the wrong idea or lesson from my thought here. Grand gestures don't equate to good friendship. After all, I could make a million dollars and give an acquaintance 20k - yes this is a grand gesture but that said person couldn't be more aloof. I believe for friendship to be held in concrete structure with pillars drilled 300ft in the ground, there has to be a level of inconvenience felt by both parties. Now both parties is very important. After all nothing comes easy in life. A garden doesn't grow from admiration; it requires you to get dirt under your fingernails, to show up when it's raining.

Now we've established some key points:

• Grand gestures don't equate to good friendship
• Good things don't come easy
• There has to be a level of inconvenience for friendships to have depth

Which leads me to my theory: Real friendship is distinguished not by the magnitude of gestures but by mutual willingness to absorb inconvenience for each other.

These inconveniences don't always have to be grand gestures, they can be simple as the 10 mins call you pick at the office, the time you drove them out, the referral, the time you kept a seat for them, or picked up their coffee when they were running late. I have an example of a woman who applied for a big role for two years straight, she didn't get it. In the third year she decided not to apply but her friend did it in her stead and interestingly she got the job. You see that, that is friendship there is beauty in loyalty and inconveniences it gives value to this terrible game of life.

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⁠"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival." - C.S. Lewis

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Friendship demands loyalty. Without it, you're just two people who happen to know each other's phone numbers - what my father would call a 'marriage of convenience,' where proximity masquerades as connection. How can you say you are friends but you have no sense of loyalty, you let your friend fall into a trap you knew was there to protect your own interest just like the dog eat dog character of the corporate world, you only extract, you make every request seem like an imposition.

I've had the luck of meeting some really terrible persons and I've also had the grace of meeting wonderful persons, and in my next life I would choose the wonderful persons who make this life have value over the ones who don't. This leaves unanswered the question how much inconvenience before it becomes friendship?

My name is Revival, I might not be the best person but I try.