Dynamic Tension

I've realised something interesting about friendship. It is by necessity an oscillation about a mean. The ideal state of friendship is one that lacks tension, and yet it is impossible to call it friendship unless there is a certain kind of tension that leads to engagement.

Take, for example, my friendship with Gnomus. It is great to sit around at a local coffee shop and 'shoot the breeze' or just hang out, happy to have a friend that is like a brother. But it cannot be only that; sometimes, there is duelling with lightsabres and displays of angst. Without those, it wouldn't be half as much a friendship.

Or my friendship with Flower Lady. It's great to sit around and sigh at the pleasure of being alive and just not do anything. But if not for the perpetual teasing I get (and I return), the tension of knowing each other's sadnesses and joys, the jumping-up-and-down irritation of having to choose a place to eat, it wouldn't be so good.

It is the same with the friendship element of my relationships with family. My parents and my siblings are friends as well as family, but without our shared history of gut-curling tensions and fighting-mad pissed-off moments, it wouldn't be so enjoyable to be that way. It is a hard-won friendship, this thing with family.

All these examples, and hundreds more, lead me to think of the difference between dynamic and static equilibrium. A static equilibrium is a broken thing; it is stasis, statehood without change. A dynamic equilibrium embodies dünamis, shifting conditions with force and energy, control and the almost-lack of it.

I am glad I have so many dynamic friendships, tensions and all. I live with the tensions; sometimes it may be more accurate to say I live for the tensions, or even because of them.