What is true friendship for you?

Mediations is a newsletter I write for software engineers and leaders but I never focus solely on software engineering. This is a newsletter for humans trying to mediate the challenges life presents, so the topics are as wide as it gets. In the last few newsletters, I talked a lot about AI. While it's both bothering me and making me feel excited, it's not the only challenge I face. There is a bigger question in my head over the last year or two. A while ago, I put myself way outside my comfort zone and decided to join a meetup on friendship. If I want to describe my experience, I wouldn't use any other word than "weird". We were around forty people gathered in a potluck dinner across three long tables in a private space. While we ate and talked about different stages of friendship, I kept thinking about the single question the organizer asked at the beginning for everyone to answer in turn. "What's true friendship for you?" Although I was still confused that the meetup started with a…