One of the things I've noticed about myself is, compared to my other friends, I have a really big collection of people I want to and actively do keep in touch with. Middle school friends. High school friends. College friends. Former teachers. Former coaches. Mentors. And any other person I have a random but meaningful relationship with. I don't think it's because I have a particularly large number of friends, as I look at most people around me and think, "You're much better at making friends than I am." And I don't think it's because I'm a particularly great communicator, as I'm definitely MIA to a lot of my closest friends in months when I don't really have much to say to them.
In nuclear chemistry, you talk a lot about a radioactive element's half-life, or the amount of time it takes for half of that element's matter to decay. The half-life of phosphorus-32 is just over 14 days, which means if you start with 100g of phosphorus-32, if you wait 14 days, you'll only have 50g of phosphorus-32 left. And if you wait another 14 days, you'll have about 25g left. This is meant to express the idea that radioactive matter decays exponentially. The rate at which it decays starts very fast but progressively slows over time.
I think relationships also fade exponentially. The rate at which someone can move from a close friend to an acquaintance is much faster than the rate at which someone can move from an acquaintance to a functional stranger. In other words, love has a half-life too, and that half-life is different for everyone. You might be really close with a person, but as soon as the system gets a jolt — you graduate from college, one of you moves, one of you changes jobs, etc — the decaying process starts. One half-life is the point where you don't actively try and keep in-touch with that person anymore.
I think my love for the people in my life has a really long half-life. The time period between when I stop regularly seeing a person and when I don't feel any desire to keep in touch with them anymore is quite lengthy. I don't think that's true for everyone. I think some people's love for the people in their life has a really short half-life, and within a month of a relationship getting disrupted, they don't really feel a desire to keep in touch with that person anymore.
Neither option is more commendable than the other. It's not necessarily that the longer your half-life is, the more righteous you are as a friend. It's just the reason my schedule for a trip back to Chicago might be breakfast with my 7th grade history teacher, lunch with a high school friend, and dinner with my old tennis coach: the love I have for the people in my life doesn't decay quickly.
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