Two hours to his door

You drove two hours to somebody's door at midnight and turned around.

That's either a wasted trip or one of the more honest things you've done all year, depending on how you tell it.

Your friendships have thinned out. Not from a fight. From an absence of any single reason to text first, and a quiet worry that you've become the kind of person who doesn't try.

Wang Huizhi was living in Shanyin. One night it snowed heavily and he got up, opened the window, drank some wine and looked out at everything gone white. He thought of his friend Dai Kui, who was in Shan County upriver.

He got into a small boat and set off that night. He travelled all night and reached Dai's door at dawn, and did not knock. He turned round and went home.

People asked him about it. His answer became a saying in Chinese. I came on the mood, and the mood ran out, so I went back. Why would I have to see Dai.

Everybody reads that as eccentric. I read it as scrupulous. He knew what the trip was for, and it wasn't the coffee and the catching up. It was the feeling of wanting someone at one in the morning, and that feeling had done its work by sunrise.

Some relationships survive whole without being serviced. Others are already gone and you're sending messages into a wall. It's worth telling which is which, and the difference isn't visible from the chat history.

MOJOWAY is a place to be honest about what you actually want from the people you miss, before you spend the next two hours driving.