I was talking recently with a friend who noted that loneliness is a major issue for Australian men. Maybe less so for women—I’m not sure. I sometimes wonder if busyness simply covers it over. Being the boss at work comes with its own kind of solitude. Responsibility sits with me, and for now, people seek me out because the buck stops here. But one day that season will end. I’ll pass the baton to someone else, and life will change.
What, then, will remain? Friendship.
The truth is, friendship itself has shifted as the years have gone by. Life doesn’t slow down—it accelerates. Commitments multiply, responsibilities grow, and before long, the friendships that once defined your days are altered or replaced by others.
Sheridan Voysey discovered the ache of this when he realised there was no one he could call at 2.00am in a crisis. That insight became Friendship Lab—an effort to explore a skill our culture rarely teaches. Popular culture talks endlessly about romance, but friendship? It’s treated as optional, background, an unmeasured currency.
Yet I’ve begun to see friendship exactly like that: a hidden economy.
It’s not a market where you keep score, but a quiet network of exchanges that make life meaningful:
- The generosity of listening when you’re tired.
- The unnoticed kindness of remembering a detail from last week’s conversation.
- The gift of presence, of just turning up.
- The rare honesty of someone saying, “I don’t have an answer, but I’ll stay with you.”
They are what carry us through seasons of change.
The challenge for me now is learning how to nurture them. To strengthen the friendships I already hold, and to begin forming new ones for the next stage of life. Like anything of value, this takes intention. Attention. A willingness to give without calculating the return, and to receive without embarrassment.
Perhaps this is the true work of friendship: not to amass contacts or accumulate shared photos, but to build something that endures long after roles and titles are passed on.
The Afterword 
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