“A Friend will, to be sure, prove himself to be also an ally when alliance becomes necessary; will lend or give when we are in need, nurse us in sickness, stand up for us among our enemies, do what he can for our widows and orphans. But such good offices are not the stuff of Friendship. The occasions for them are almost interruptions. They are in one way relevant to it, in another not. Relevant, because you would be a false friend if you would not do them when the need arose; irrelevant, because the role of benefactor always remains accidental, even a little alien, to that of Friend… We are sorry that any gift or loan or night-watching should have been necessary - and now for heaven’s sake, let us forget all about it and go back to the things we really want to do or talk of together. Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love.”
-The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis

I planned to cut down this quote, but really it would be doing C.S. Lewis an injustice to splice up his words too much, and I want his whole idea on friendship to be very well communicated. Essentially, Lewis is saying here that friends reach a level in their relationship where they are so attached and comfortable with each other that common, polite manners are unnecessary and can actually be uncomfortable. I believe many of us can relate to this with our closest friends - a favor is done readily and as Lewis points out the automatic response is generally along the lines of, “Don’t mention it.”

I do not think, though, that most usually friends are sorry to have to do any favors. On the contrary, I believe people view favor giving as an affirmation of friendship. The bigger the favor the better the friend, right? Because friends are so comfortable with each other, and because the favor is generally irrelevant to the friendship itself, however, I agree with Lewis when he states that friends do not really want to dwell on the favor, but would rather just go back into whatever good things brought them together and keeps them together. They do not wish to spend any more time talking of the matter because it only detracts from other subjects.

However, I do not accept that closeness is an excuse for rudeness. I am finding that many people around my age and younger have adopted a theory that if they become close enough with someone, they can treat them relatively poorly and get away with it. They believe that forgiveness is a given and a high tolerance for indecency is all a part of friendship. If you want me while I am high then you shall also have me when I am low. This is the attitude of many, many people I have come across in high school and even now in college. I support the idea that friends should be there for each other when a hard time strikes and that, yes, you can and should be more comfortable with your friends to a point where your flaws can be seen and where you are vulnerable. But I refuse the idea that you can treat a friend as though they are guaranteed, as though you have a right to their friendship no matter how you treat them.

So when Lewis claims, “Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love,” I must qualify that with although gratitude may not enrich friendship, a lack of gratitude takes away from it and can even sour it. If we do not practice giving thanks and letting those who we most care about know that we are truly grateful for whatever favors they do for us, then we will begin to expect these favors and take our friends for granted. Attitudes like this can become something of a sinkhole - once you start down this kind of path, it is easy to plunge to even lower depths without even noticing. What I mean is that negative behaviors breed more negative behaviors through familiarity. When you find that a friend can tolerate a negative behavior, you may try out another one, usually by accident but maybe even as a test of power, and if he/she withstands it, you may keep this up until soon you really are not treating that friend very well at all.

I realized that I had reached this level with a friend when I cancelled plans with him last minute and thought nothing of it except that he would be okay, because we were close enough friends. That made it alright somehow. It’s not that I even expected automatic forgiveness; I simply and quite mistakenly did not think that he should be angry with me for something like that. When I found out how much it did upset him, it woke me up. I realized I was not treating him fairly; I was not treating him like a friend, or how really anyone should be treated.

Therefore, even though it might feel completely unnecessary to be thanked or to thank a friend for doing a favor, no matter how big or small, I believe it is one of those things that should be done. It lets the other person know that you are not taking them for granted. It lets them know that you do value them. And if you truly do wish to be completely open to your friends, despite the fact that the favor has nothing to do with your friendship, does it not make sense to let them know anyway how much a favor does mean to you?