By Dr Samar Verma*
The Four Circles of Friendship
On a rainy evening not long ago, an old class photograph surfaced in a group chat. There we were, creased blazers, uncertain haircuts, the future still an unopened envelope. For a few minutes, the years folded in on themselves and the room filled with voices I had not heard in decades. It reminded me that our friendships, like our lives, tend to arrange themselves in circles – four of them, mostly – and that we spend a surprising amount of time finding our way back to where we began.
The first circle (The Originals) is the easiest to name and the hardest to replace. School and college friends are stitched together by repetition and ridiculousness: the same benches, the same exams, the same jokes that, for reasons no algorithm can explain, remain funny forever. These friendships ask very little and give a great deal. You don’t need to explain your origin story to people who were present for the first chapter. They knew you before your resume, your postcode, your politics, your acquisitions and your careful adult defences. Their trust is not calculated; it is etched.
Then the world expands and we step into the second circle (Professional Plus) – colleagues, clients, mentors, and, if we marry, the extended constellation of a partner’s friendships. The friendships here are real, even generous, but they travel with luggage: deadlines, roles, reputation, the ever-ticking clock. Affection competes with logistics. The bonds that survive a job change or a move away often ripen into something steady and unlabelled, but many remain context-bound, vivid for a season and then- without malice- quiet.
The third circle (Parental Network) arrives when our children become our social calendar. Overnight, we learn the names of teachers we’ve never met and the birthdays of children we did not know a year ago. In this PTA (Parent Teacher Association) economy, kindness is a form of infrastructure: a spare tiffin is found, a ride materialises, a last-minute costume is conjured from thin air and WhatsApp. It is not, by default, the warmest circle. It is, however, quietly civilisational. The centre of gravity is our children’s lives, not our own. When their routes diverge, the ties loosen. Now and then, though, warmth burns through the function: a conversation lingers after pickup, a problem shared becomes a ritual of tea, and a friendship slips, unfussed, into our permanent address book.
And then, almost without announcement, the house changes its music. The nest empties or lightens; the calendar sighs. This is the season of the return. I find myself wandering back to the first circle with a gentler gaze, noticing things I had hurried past in the old race to somewhere else. People I once barely registered as classmates have become delightful company- steady, amused, grounded. A few of the legends of my youth feel different now, as if the conversation we carried for years has simply reached its natural end. There is no quarrel in this recognition- only acknowledgement that we have grown along different lines. And, almost to my surprise, one or two colleagues from the second circle now sit at the centre table without fanfare. They did not share my childhood, but they carried enough of my adulthood to earn a key.
Somewhere on the edge of this return, a fourth circle (Affinal Outliers) glints into view: the parents and relatives of our children’s in-laws. These are connections born of ceremony and kept upright by good manners. Every so often, a shared habit or a shared history folds duty into ease, and genuine affection takes root. More often, the relationship remains what it is meant to be: friendly, respectful, bounded – and that is perfectly fine. Not every tie is destined for depth; not every corridor needs to open into a room.
It is tempting to draw hard lessons from these circles, to stack them in a neat hierarchy of “real” and “merely useful”. But life is not a seating chart; it is a procession, and each circle has had its moment of necessity. In my own third stage – the return to earlier friendships with the roomier heart of middle age – I am learning a few quiet truths that feel more like observations than advice.
The first is that function is not the enemy of feeling. The parental network at its best is a small public good, a web of micro-favours and shared vigilance that keeps families afloat. It need not apologise for being practical. If friendship grows there, count it as grace, not failure of design.
The second is that attention is the price of intimacy, and attention is a finite resource. In the years of the second circle, when work expands to fill the container of your day, it is easy to confuse frequency for friendship. But when the job changes and the calendar shifts, you discover who travels with you without the scaffolding. Those who do – colleagues or spouse – adjacent acquaintances who kept showing up after the context dissolved – are worth the unhurried investment that the return allows.
The third is that curating is not cruelty. Coming back to school and college friends does not oblige us to perform a museum of our youth. It permits us to extend some friendships, reopen others, let a few rest, and make a new room for the people who earned their place later. There is tenderness in pruning, too; it protects the light.
And perhaps a final, slightly indulgent thought: serendipity needs a little architecture. The friendships of this stage do not necessarily burst forth from grand reunions. They gather in the small, repeatable things – a weekend walk, a standing breakfast, a quiet film night that keeps its promise. The habit matters more than the spectacle. If the fourth circle knocks, I suspect the same will be true: formality first, then familiarity, and, only if the ground allows, the beginnings of something easy.
When I look again at that old class photo, I am struck by how calmly it sits next to the newer pictures on my phone: a colleague holding an umbrella in a stubborn rain; a fellow parent waving from across a school gate; a recent wedding where two families, careful and hopeful, attempt the choreography of togetherness. The circles are not in competition. They are successive languages we learn to speak, forgetting some words, discovering others, carrying a few phrases forward because they still taste right in the mouth.
A Gentle Permission
We spend years believing that every social tie must be maximised – that good people transmute acquaintances into confidants through sheer force of personality and time management. It isn’t true, and it isn’t necessary. The four circles serve different purposes at different moments, and their differences are a feature, not a flaw. You can be warm without being woven-in; helpful without being held; neighbourly without being necessary.
And when, as it often happens, a late-night photo summons the old crew, allow yourself the homecoming. Not because the first circle is perfect- it isn’t- but because it is a reliable harbour from which to sail again. The circle widens and tightens in seasons; friendships ebb and return. The task is not to keep every boat docked forever. It is to know, with affection and clarity, which ones you will always make room for when they return to shore.
*Dr. Samar Verma is an economist, public policy professional and an institution-builder, with 28 years of experience in economic policy research, international development, grant management and philanthropic leadership.
