I remember being on the playground in second grade, toward the beginning of the school year, and seeing a girl with the same hot pink and white sneakers that I had on—we immediately understood that we were best friends, and we stayed that way throughout the rest of elementary school. Looking back, we had little else in common, and I think that’s amazing. We found one similarity and none of our differences then mattered. (Side note: I still own a pair of white and hot pink sneakers. If you do too, let’s get coffee!)

Sometimes I longingly remember how easy it seemed to cultivate friendships in childhood and adolescence. At those times in my life, I spent hours and hours a day doing life with friends. Friendships are the number one priority for most children and teenagers—and developmentally, this is a good thing. Now that I’m married and raising a child of my own, it’s tempting to feel that it’s so much harder to develop friendships under the demands of everyday life. The reality is that it’s not exactly harder, it’s just different. Friendship looks different depending on the stage of life you are in, but I find that while friendships in adulthood are different than those in childhood, these differences are the beauty in adult friendships.

When I was ten, my friends were other ten year olds; when I was sixteen, my friends were all teenagers. College was the first time I began to make friends with people whom I didn’t have anything in common with on the outside. Other students with different majors than me, an older couple with no children, retirees in their sixties, young families, and young adults just getting established in their careers . . . I learned to find a way to relate to anyone by mining for common ground.

In my adult years, I look for ways to find community but I don’t have hours a day to socialize like I did before I had to do my own laundry and go grocery shopping. (Disclaimer: I am an introvert; if you are an extravert, this might not make any sense to you.) As I navigate how to make friends in the stage I’m in, I find myself stepping out of my comfort zone as I seek to make a connection. The innocent eyes of a child make it easy to see what is in common; the application in adulthood is to seek it out. For me, this has to do with proximity: I have to make friends with the people in my path. My coworkers, the other moms at swim practice, martial arts class, neighbors . . . the people I spend time with daily have become the pool of friendships from which I can choose. Because we are sharing the same space, we automatically have something in common and we can excavate each other’s lives to learn what else we share, unalarmed by any differences we find. A friendship is built on the commonalities.

The beauty of adult friendships is that the women I’m around now are from a range of ages, all walks of life, educational backgrounds, and different worldviews. We focus on finding what we have in common and explore our differences from a place of unity. I choose to invest the time I have with the people I see for several hours a week, all year long. If I didn’t befriend those on my path, I would have very few friends! I have observed that had I been in high school with some of the people I am friends with today, I might not have taken the time to get to know them. It’s a shame to think of the relationships I might have missed out on. In the end, I’ve realized that those childhood and early adulthood friendships have prepared me for the mature, lifelong friendships that I cultivate today, and I can appreciate the beauty of adult friendships.