How to Celebrate International Day of Friendship – July 30, 2017

International Day of Friendship
July 30, 2017

Scroll through your contact list and select a contact you don’t immediately recognize – bonus points if it’s listed only by first name, inanimate object name, or Homeric epithet (e.g., “no-pants frat boy,” “wonk-eye bowling pin,” “governor-elect,” etc.). Depending on the information available to you, begin a correspondence over text, email, or physical mail with a simple greeting, slowly escalating the frequency and intensity of your communications over the course of the day. Forge a genuine emotional connection with your rediscovered contact. Meet for coffee. Fall in love. Get married. (Friendship plays an integral role in successful marriages.) In one year, begin the process again.

Links & Learning

Are online friends “real?”

Nobody Has Real Friends Anymore – New York Post
Let’s Really Be Friends: A Defense of Online Intimacy – New Republic
I’d Rather Have Online Friends Than Real Ones – Washington Post
Online Friends Vs. Real Life Friends: A Comparison – Thought Catalog
Friendship in the Time of Technology – Huffington Post (source for our cover image, too)

Making and keeping friends.

How to Make New Friends (and Keep the Old) as a Young Adult – Greatist
How to Make Friends as an Adult in Four Simple Steps – Huffington Post
How to Be a Good Friend – Real Simple
27 Small But Awesome Ways to Be a Good Friend – BuzzFeed

What’s all this about Homer?

Epithets in Homer on Wikipedia
Homer on Biography.com
The Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler courtesy of MIT’s Classics department
The Illiad, translated by Samuel Butler courtesy of MIT’s Classics department

Not to be confused with Homer Simpson.