We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship

by Will Schwalbe

Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.

The only way to have a friend is to be one. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why isn’t it enough that our friends are just our friends?

After almost four decades, we had finally reached the point where we could talk to each other about almost everything. Perhaps the greatest reward for that was that we no longer felt compelled to say anything at all.

We were two guys pushing sixty, with maybe a few decades ahead of us. The angel of death had taken so many people from us, but it hadn’t come for either of us yet. If our luck held, there were plenty of conversations still to come.