Long live friendship: a little gift that moved me

Life without friends must be dull. That thought has been with me for the past six months, and its voice keeps getting louder.

I still remember how little of a social life I had during my four years at university. Whenever I had time, I went to the library and stayed all day. When I felt particularly bottled up, I would work through my WeChat contacts, “bothering” friends one by one and asking them to talk. Over time, that did not work out very well. I often reached out only when I needed somewhere to put my feelings, and I think they began to find it tiring. Perhaps I chose bad moments. Perhaps I was simply poor at noticing how they felt and caused them more trouble than I realized.

Gradually, I learned to be alone. At the time, that seemed like a clever solution: I thought I had dealt with my loneliness. Looking back, I do not think I had. After graduating, encountering more of the world, and spending time with more people, I began to see that my unmet emotional needs had never really gone away. They had taken another form. I kept emphasizing my strengths to distance myself from what I imagined to be the “ignorant crowd.” I can now see how harmful that was. It made my thinking closed and isolated—something that became particularly clear as I made new friends.

First, I realized that I was not nearly as good at many things as I had imagined. In some areas, I could barely give myself a passing grade. After almost a year of teaching myself Japanese, for example, I still could not manage even an ordinary conversation with a Japanese speaker. Second, many friends were not following the same path as me, yet their openness, cheerfulness, humility, and courtesy were exactly what I was slowly losing. Those qualities are fundamental to getting along with people; they have value in themselves. Third, I began to see that happiness does not require great wealth. A loving family and healthy, safe loved ones can make an ordinary life a deeply good one.

Last night, a young friend who is still in primary school gave me a small present: a little frog she had made by hand. I felt an unexpected burst of joy when she handed it to me, and that feeling grew after I got home. Sitting on my bed, I happily held the little frog, placed it beside my pillow, and took a picture to share on WeChat Moments. Then the excitement softened into a deeper happiness. I kept looking at that frog, unable to put the feeling aside.

Yes, this is how our feelings work.

They need attention, care, and some measure of fulfillment.

But perhaps they do not ask for much. A little—even a very little—can keep someone happy for a long, long time.