"Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel any pain anymore that you're in real trouble."
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On the surface, a profound friendship is nothing but human connection. But have we lost the ability to see it so? To feel friendship in moments and watch it get away from us. True friendship is felt in a physical and spiritual sense. All of human connection is merely sensations that go beyond the limits of perception and extend farther than the mountains of survival. The book declares that we take a lot of ourselves and our labors for granted. It shares how we appreciate those who do more for us than we think we deserve. It's one of those books you will read to preoccupy your mind while life carries you forward. Meanwhile, our greatest fears and greatest truths somehow become gifts given to us by life as meaningful background. Like Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage, as touched upon many times in the book. You will feel this book more deeply if you've lost friends, not by the inevitability of death but by isolation and rejection. It's a true extension of some of life's unanswered questions and longings. The book may not be Murakami's most distinctive works. But when you complement it with a courageous look into who you are and the kind of friendships you are a part of, it puts you under the microscope of love.
After all, in life, what we don't do weighs strong against what we do. And that widens our search for finding meaning in everything. That is what makes friendship and the loss of one memorable.