Jan 14, 2026 | By Joseph Yu BF ’28

When was the last time you uttered the word “friend”? I can guarantee it was at some point today. “Oh, he’s a friend from class,” you might’ve said, when in reality you’ve only met twice. “I’ve got a friend who works there — she can help,” when you’ve only connected on LinkedIn and have never met in person. Or someone might’ve told you, “Let’s be friends,” a fragile compromise suggesting the two of you can barely tolerate each other.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Emma Ventresca BF ’26

An old friend came to visit campus and brought his girlfriend along to visit Yale for the first time. He asked if I would give her a tour, and of course, I obliged. We started in Sterling Memorial Library first, the cathedral-turned-bohemoth library in the center of campus. While I walked through the front doors and beelined it to show her my favorite reading room, my friend and his girlfriend remained at the front entrance staring up at the ceiling. Then I realized—my tour of Yale was not a standard admissions tour. For me, the highlights of Yale were not its architectural wonders, but the people who inhabited them.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Nicolas Wyszkowski MY ’26

The great minds that developed modern physics were in near unanimous agreement that physical law (and the universe more broadly) was not the result of a Creator, at least not one interested in human affairs. Nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner remarks in his famous essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences that, “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious… there is no rational explanation for [it].” What Wigner is saying here is very deep: the beauty, rationality, and simplicity of physical law evidenced in its ability to be mathematically well-approximated does not have a rational explanation.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Isaac Oberman DC ’26

You can’t have more than one best friend; superlative comparisons do not allow for two people to be ‘best.’ If I do not consider a person to be my best friend, but they consider me their best friend, then categorically, we are not best friends. I am their best friend. We cannot enter into a unity of best friendship; can I remain their best friend?

Jan 14, 2026 | By Colin Levine SY ’28

At first, Peter runs away, racked with fear. But then he turns and tentatively follows his suffering friend from a distance. Peter wants to be with his friend in the end: a feat he believes he has the moral strength to achieve. He proudly promised his friend only a few hours ago, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” And so he sits just outside the trial proceedings, watching, and warming his hands with the masses on the cold April night.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Tori Cook JE ’27

We live in a time when our friendships proliferate but seem strangely fragile. We have thousands of contacts, group chats, connections, and people we “do life with,” yet so many of our relationships are cautious, provisional, and thin. Many of us cannot name more than one or two people we would trust with our grief, failures, or hopes outside of immediate family. We have fewer confidants, fewer people who can lovingly hold us accountable, and fewer relationships strong enough to bear inconvenience. It seems that friendships today take place in the utilitarian realm of compatibility or emotional pleasantness rather than deeper connective love: our friends are people we enjoy who don’t ask too much of us, and of whom we don’t ask too much as well.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Aerin McLaughlin ES ’26

“You are who you surround yourself with” is a common phrase that is often regarded as an important piece of advice for navigating friendships. Although we hear it often, and maybe even repeat it ourselves, we seldom understand what to take from it. In the days before we lose our innocence, questions regarding our friend’s integrity are not quite as important as questions regarding their favorite color or movie. But as we age, our perception of the world quickly changes, and so do our questions. It is natural to wonder just how much of an influence friends can or should have on us. It is also natural to question just how much we can or should, in return, influence them. Oftentimes, these questions run through our minds anytime we attempt to separate ourselves from those we spend time with.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Aalia Holt SY ’27

Birds of a feather flock together, so goes the old adage. But, is it really true? Is it true that the more similar two people are, the easier friendship forms. In the best of friends, something far more important than similarities are at work; there we find forgiveness and shared commitment. The story of a young girl reveals close friendships forming around feathers of various shades and shapes.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Raleigh Adams YDS ’26

A sunny afternoon. The three sit in a piazza near a fountain. Pantalone sighs dramatically over a letter in his hands.

PANTALONE:

(Heaving a sigh so theatrical pigeons scatter, clutching the letter to his chest as if it were a will)

Ohhh—misery! Tragedy! Catastrophe disguised as correspondence! My dear friend Giacomo has abandoned Venice for Milan. Milan! A city of fog, fashion, and forgetfulness!

(Looking to the Heavens)

O saints, why must my friends migrate like storks, leaving me a lonely scarecrow in life’s field?

Jan 14, 2026 | By Gavin Susantio YDS ’25

What do humans, elves, and God have in common? They’ve been storied throughout the ages as impossible friends. But the history of the strangest friendships, no matter how unlikely, may be the most human stories ever told. When the divine befriends the mortal, or the machine the human, a sacred bridge forms between the finite and the infinite. Across great fiction, the relationships between humans and robots, elves and dwarves, and gods and creatures share a striking feature: in each pair, one kind of being is immortal.

Jan 14, 2026 | By Sydney Scheller BR ’26

Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, defines friendship broadly as “with respect to each other there is a mutual and recognised love, and those who love each other wish well to each other in that respect in which they love one another.” He outlines: 1) friendships of utility, 2) friendships of pleasure, and 3) friendships of virtue. In a friendship of utility, each party “loves for the sake of what is good for themselves.” When friends search after what is pleasurable for themselves, it is a friendship of pleasure. However, in a friendship of virtue, friends love each other for the very being that the other is. In their friend, they see shining back both the objective good and the good they see in themselves.