Blessed friendship

I'm fortunate that I get to encounter a lot of people. I'm a sociable guy most of the time. I'm even more fortunate that a few of those part with some impression. It seems favorable - most of the time.
Some of those folks I see very regularly. And in some circles, that is identified as the creation of friendships.
But I was recently reminded of the special chemistry that creates real friendship. It's a lesson I'm especially thankful for.
The lesson came in the return of a long-time friend. We'd been separated by miles and some sort of discomfort for years. But reuniting was quite simply easy.
Despite the gaps, we were immediately comfortable. It stemmed from a sense we know each other beyond the surface. We have history, good and bad, which has let us see inside one another. We have shared experience that has tightened the bonds. We didn't deeply delve into the whys and what ifs of what had gone before. We just slipped into now and let what we each are, and what we are together, be. We are intimate in our physical reaction to one another and our comfortable laughter. More than half a decade of disconnect didn't exist.
In more than half a century of life, I think there are maybe four people like this for me. One I see sporadically, another seldom, a third not in years. And then this fourth.
But for all of them, it's as if time doesn't pass. This friend has a somewhat cynical theory that "people don't change." But instead of coming off jaded, it came off as connection. I think the friend believes people grow and become more aware, but that there is a core value system. We count on the good and bad in that value system, the fact we recognize it in one another, as a strong part of friendship. And it lets us pick up wherever time paused for us.
I've become a settler. I can often label friendship, maybe even love, in relationships that fall short of expectations. If that's all there is for an extended time, that's what you take.
But visits like this one, friends like this one, remind me something more is possible. I hope it makes me hold out for better. Because when you have friends who justify these expectations, who are like no others for some reasons you can't even identify, you feel blessed.