I was sitting with my students the other day, watching them during break time. Half of them weren’t talking to each other. They were on their phones. Sitting next to someone, but somewhere else entirely.
I didn’t say anything. I just watched. There’s an old saying.
A friend is a mirror. You see yourself in who you spend time with.
But I keep wondering what happens when the mirror is a screen. We’ve always had different kinds of friends. We just never named them clearly. The one who pulls you forward. The one who fills your hours with nothing. The one who takes, quietly, without you noticing. The one who says the hard thing because they care.
Most of us have had all four. Sometimes the same person was all four at different points. What history remembered Rumi had Shams of Tabriz. One meeting. One friendship. It turned a scholar into a poet…
