Quick note: I apologize for the delay. I felt I was oversaturating you all with emails and wanted to give you some breathing room. I grew distracted by a recent project concerning the L-word and Disappointment. But this month’s essay fell right into my lap. Please, consider subscribing if you have not already or recommending a friend to do so.
Despite being centuries apart, both St. Augustine and Emerson have written exceptional works on friendship. Philosophies, if you may, and none of which I have read; a shocking admission of intellectual guilt for someone who prides himself on steadfast research to underpin his academic facade.
But just this once it may prove useful, necessary even, to write unmolested by the influence of such impactul titans. Friendship, and indeed my thoughts on it, demand a soulish reveal as naked as it is searing. This past weekend I was reminded of how miraculous friendship is - a phenomenon whose mystique is owed the same lofty status as any other wonder in our universe.
In A Competing World
where affection, attention and approval are all vigorously pursued, finding friends should be appreciably difficult. Despite being rather devious, an age old trick for admiration is putting others down. Drive to the dead-end job your high school bully is part-timing at and remind yourself of this reality.
Flowing into the basin of fulfillment are rivers of whatever brings us self-esteem. Job security and a high income. Settling down with a partner. Children. Home ownership. Zoom in further and you’ll uncover that this self-esteem is inseparable from a positive peer perception. In other terms, many of us strive for those aforementioned checkmarks not out of a sincere yearning for them, but because they ignite our inner circle into believing we have our shit together.
And of course, being the first to showcase these achievements only earns bonus points. Inversely, being the last to do so can induce self pity or worse, self hate. It is in this milieu where a culture of competition forms naturally. Like a detective spraying luminol across a hotel crime scene, the fragility of a bond between friends is often exposed when the light disappears.
Although I hate how the zero-sum nature of modernity wholly evaporated the once egalitarian essense of mankind, it is an undeniable cornerstone of progress. But like the pillars of ancient pantheons still observable to us today, true friendship still stands strong, symbolizing that the bedrock of our souls is and forever will be paved by a desire to share our life with those looking to do the same.
I could dedicate many a personal story to codifying the inevitably of strife into human Law, but what purpose would these depressing disclosures serve in an essay of this sort? Besides, anyone untouched by despair will be soon enough, sadly. Instead, I’ll trust you’re nodding along with me when I say that Life has in store a few curveballs for us all.
And it is in these unpredictably predictable eventualities where we first begin. Seeing my friends this weekend, in particular an old college roommate, jolted loose a memory of mine I hold in the same esteem I keep my buddy, Ryan.
We first met by chance, two transfers paired together in a room full of other transfer students. Our dorm became the island of misfit boys. Ryan and I could not be more different, with a love for happy hour deals our only tethering twine. And yet, this 6-foot-something, whenisnhegoingtogetahaircut lefty is indeed the epitome of friendship’s unknowable machinations.
During our first month as roomies, I once watched Ryan stir awake around 9am, fish a shard of glass out of his mouth, nonchalantly place it on a nightstand, then go back to bed. I should have known he’d be around for the long haul when I simply shrugged it off. Yet, his insight of my wellbeing is as still as sharp as whatever he jarred loose from his mouth that morning.
You do not know me well enough if you think you can comfortably ask me questions about my parents. Like he is now, I keep my father buried, and not because our relationship was one of turbulence, but because it was entirely perfect. I like where I keep him and incidentally, it is where only I can reach him.
My mother is just as sacred. Sure, you can inquire about her professorship or how excited she is to be on the cusp of grandparenthood. But dig any deeper and you’ll find an indurate core instead of the discussion your searching for. Perhaps sometimes I confuse protecting her with protecting myself; a likely casualty of being thrust into manhood without my father around to remind me that their is strength in vulnerability.
Ryan knows this and doesn’t care. Or perhaps more fittingly, he cares remarkably so. Which is why on one fruitful car ride to lord knows where to visit lord knows who, he asked me a question not a single person had ever asked me: “So dude, is your mom dating again?”
My response is less important to know than what is the inaccessibility of this question. For it does more than unmask my friend as a person willing to risk whatever cache he has stockpiled throughout the years. It demonstrates why he would be willing to risk it.
Paramount to friendship, vulnerability breathes life into the embers imperative for braving humanity’s coldest hours. In that moment, he upheld me as someone not to struggle against, but someone to struggle alongside of. Someone to bear witness when the claws of tragedy take hold within such delicate skin. Someone who will never perceive my vulnerability as opportunity, but as a wound which needs tending to. It isn’t falling into the abyss and hoping your friends are nearby for rescue, it’s knowing that they are already down there with you.
This requires a most special gamble. Any stranger or acquaintance asking that question would find themselves relegated to the furthest of my outer circle, never to be seen or trusted again. Not Ryan. He put it all on the line for me and in doing so jeopardized the bond between us, but with the conscious decision-making of someone who perceived me as worth it. This, dear readers, is but one miracle of friendship.
A Choice
If vulnerability is the foundation for friendship, choice is the lot where this home was built upon. The agency to select who gains entrance into such a world is the secret to friendship; one as terrifying as it is unimpeachable.
There is cosmic beauty in this simplicity, especially when considering the young ages many of us find our lifelong companions. It was in the first grade when Joe became a lifer for me, most likely because he played soccer during recess. Even then, my undeveloped subconscious just knew that we would walk in the same rhythm. Our bond has made a mockery of Time, cosigning the fated march of minutes into our servitude.
There is a funny, clever way I once learned about the cross section of choice and friendship. Family members are those we love but those we do not choose. Interestingly, I’ve dedicated much time and effort into cultivating the connection between my sisters and me, my cousins and me. This requires labor, but a rewarding product awaits.
Contrast this with friendship. How often have we’ve declared our most beloved of pals to be family. Indeed, when I moved out of my college apartment after the conclusion of my senior year, I cried in a pub parking lot to my mother. “I feel like I’m leaving behind my brothers.”
But this betrays the sense of brotherhood. I chose my friends. There was cognition. There was the unlocking of the door. The entryway into some of my deepest, most unspeakable experiences had let some light slip through. Conversely, they chose me as the recipient of whatever they let emote; joy, anguish, true fear. There is real power in wittingly exposing chinks in your armor.
Born from these decisions is an undeniable love, platonic yet fathomless. And in this love lies the potential for our undoing. To allow glimpses of our inner selves and have them revealed to the unordained could be the unfortunate peril of disclosure. Perhaps the greatest autonomy we possess is the one where we risk losing the autonomy of sharing our secrets.
Nevertheless, these choices are forged in flames unseen, but immensely felt. It is an act of surrender despite the absence of war. Although often misinterpreted as a capitulation of privacy, to yield to friendship is to embrace the beckoning of pure personhood. After all, can you be yourself if no one else knows who you truly are? To be a member of this world requires you befriend members of this world.
Being The Event
I threw an impromptu house party last week. Yes, I lacked the requisite chips and dip or even enough chairs, but four walls are enough when the right group of folks get together.
Television and movies paint an unfamiliar, unrealistic portrait of what constitutes a night to remember. While wild shenanigans make for memorable stories, I’ve often found the retelling of these moments more rewarding. More specifically, I’ve found the context in which they’re retold to be more rewarding.
If you were to ask my college friends what our favorite memory is, they’d all relinquish the same response: the day we painted a shed in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Long story short, we found ourselves collectively down $350. That summer we hosted a legendary 4th of July party, fitted with a DJ, jerry-rigged dance floor and fireworks - none of which we can be responsible for planning. No, we were simply the sacrificial vessel.
Naturally, our house was wrecked. My penance for this debauchery was simple; to shovel throw up and diarrhea out of a clogged toilet. When we brainlessly doubled down on throwing another party, one of our roommates went rogue and ordered porta-potties. Hence, being $350 in the hole.
There is no spectacle quite as jaw-dropping as a group of broke 20-somethings trying to scrounge together some cash. We tossed around ideas ranging from selling blood to hitting the casino. Both would likely leave us feeling faint and unsatisfied. Finally, a second Ryan magically recalled that a contact about fifteen minutes away had mentioned needing his shed and porch deck repainted. As fate would have it, he was willing to pay precisely $350.
A half dozen of us piled into two cars. One headed towards the package store and one to McDonald’s - necessary fuel for this type of work. For the next four hours or so we smacked cobalt blue paint onto a shed and trimmed it with an ivory white.
The pinnacle of male camaraderie is when guys participate in a meaningless task. This was an afternoon of joking around, eating greasy food and narrating the memories that have brought us all together. It was worship; an unmistakable practice in honoring the love shared between us.
Asserting a pub crawl or a tailgate to be what makes friends happy would be an incorrection assumption. It is never the event which elicits the joy. Rather, we are the event. The playful jousting. The relationship inquiries. The recollection of our favorite memories. A single person can go to a football game alone, but they cannot commence the shared experience they so desire.
The context where we meet is merely the conduit for what we seek. It houses the environment for releasing inhibition and when done around loved ones, we find the carefree spirit of our adolescence resurfaced. Do not be fooled, however, into thinking this transformation brought on by the meeting place you’ve chosen. For magic can only be done by the living.
And there was a bit of magic at my house party last week.
Family
The first moment one realizes their siblings are their friends is a warmer moment than when first considering your friends to be family. But whether we love them or not, family is to a degree guaranteed for every living being. Friends, however, are not. The sheer fact that mostly everyone has them is incontrovertibly the most awesome display of mankind’s power.
They’re unnecessary for survival in today’s world. They come with risks and downside. They can grow fickle and infrequent, distant and despondent. They provide no shelter, offspring or intimacy. But to live without them is to die alive.
Anchorites launch themselves into reclusivity in the hopes of finding god. Such a sin, ironically. There is a piece of the divine within every text, every pint shared, every phone call made while stuck in traffic. There is a Mike or Jake waiting to hear another story about you being you. And I’d like to thank all of my friends, ones mentioned here and ones not, for allowing me such vulnerability. I’d be broken shards if you never gave me the grace to present a mosaic. We’d all be. And the world deserves this beauty.