THINKING ABOUT FRIENDSHIP

 

This afternoon I took a walk at the bird refuge, and as I walked in the icy wind, I thought about friendship. I wondered if one can ever be the friend another needs, or if we can only be the friend we ourselves need. Is the filter of the ego so strong that it cannot allow the possibility that the friendship I need is not that which my friend needs?

I began by wondering if friendship is just friendship, and it’s all the same, and I arrived at the thought that although the underlying energy of friendship is love, and love is love, pure and simple, the expression of it isn’t at all simple. Nor is it “the same.” I think we filter that which we receive and give by our own experiences and our own needs that have arisen from them. For example, I sometimes want a friend to whom I can speak honestly, who will hear me and respond. I don’t need to be told what to do. I just need to know I have been heard and understood.  At other times, just being in the presence of a kindred spirit is enough, no talk needed.

But someone else, who has lived their own life and had their own experiences, may not want to share much at all, just spending time with the energy of a person who appreciates them is enough. Another person might want to tell their stories to another, know they’ve been heard and commented upon and not really respond too much to any one else’s stories. Perhaps their need is to go deeper than current or past experiences, to a place where the current runs strong, with little conversation. My question is, am I able to recognize another person’s need?

This reminds me of a friend from over forty years ago. We were young women together, before children or marriages. She was so dear to me, and even attended the birth of my first child. I saw no end in sight for the friendship, until it abruptly ended. She told me that she would never deny what we had, but it was over.  She had just joined Scientology when this happened, and remains with them today, so that may explain the ending of the friendship. The point is that it didn’t occur to me at the time that sometimes a friendship has its season and can retreat without any event precipitating its end and without any hard feelings. I saw this woman about five years ago and we had a lovely reunion. I don’t expect to ever see her again, and that’s okay. She was right. We had the time we had and that was enough.

As I’ve grown older, I think my friendships have deepened. I need to speak my truth, and I think my friends feel the same.  I try to speak with clarity, honesty, and love. Sometimes the clarity gets in the way a little bit, but really, who has time for dodging around? As long as you speak from a point of neutrality, grounded in love, not judgement, I think it ought to be just fine. But maybe I just think that because it’s what I think. Maybe, I am not being the friend another needs because I can only imagine friendship from my own point of being. This is beginning to seem like a spiraling rabbit hole, so I’ll stop. But I’ll continue to think about it, and wonder about it. Maybe even write about it again.

Have a love-ly week.

 

Note to an old friend

Dear Old Friend,

I saw you riding your bike this morning.  You were with your beautiful, brilliant daughter, pedaling hard, headed home from the park.  You looked good.  Trim.  It looks like you’ve been riding regularly.  It’s been a while since I thought about you.  At least two weeks.  I wanted to stop you and chat.  Hug you both, and find out how you’ve been, how you’re doing, what’s new.  I wanted to know you again.  But I didn’t stop you.  I would certainly have cried if I had.

We used to be friends.  We were of a like mind about many things.  We talked about stuff that mattered, stuff that interested us, new ideas, and things we wondered about.  We used to fantasize about starting a charter school and doing education the right way.  There was no ambiguity about what kind of friendship it was.  It was just a real one.  I treasured that friendship.

So, why am I writing this in the past tense?  Why did that friendship end so abruptly?  Do you remember?  I never have figured it out.  Was it because I disappointed you, or the reverse?  Did I feel betrayed by you?  A little.  I felt betrayed by a truth untold, and many truths told in too much detail.  But then you never called or wrote again.  Why was that?  Were you so disappointed in me that you couldn’t continue to be friends?  Or did you think I could not surmount what had happened?  I could have.  The only important part of that whole thing-that-ended-our-friendship was the friendship itself.  The thing was not at all important to me, really.  Maybe the time just got too long to break the silence, and then we both figured the friendship was over.

I still feel that way, like I don’t know how to break through the quiet.  I wouldn’t know what to say to you now, after so long.  What does one say to a friend long gone? Would I know what to say if I knew exactly why we cut the thread of our friendship?  Probably not, but that silence would be out of fear of confrontation.  This silence is born of bewilderment and sadness.  And disappointment.

These last few months have been really hard for me for reasons that don’t involve you at all.  I’m very thankful for the support of my friends during this time.  It seems to me that hard times wake me up to what is important in a bigger way than the things I ordinarily focus on.  When I was a little girl my mom taught me to sing a little song that went like this:
“Make new friends, but keep the old…One is Silver and the other is Gold.”   She was right,  I am certain.  I still feel like I’ve lost a piece of my treasure.  I wish it were otherwise.

There is another way of looking at this whole thing.  Once, a really long time ago a friend just stopped calling or visiting me.  I couldn’t think of a thing that had happened to cause her to do that.  We were life friends, I thought.  I mean, she was at the birth of my first child, for goodness sake.  Finally, years later, I had the opportunity to ask her what had happened.  By then she was a Scientologist and she said something like “Friendships are a limited time thing.  They last as long as they are supposed to and then you move on.  No regrets, no looking back.  It was what it was.  I would never deny it, but I can’t bring it back either.”  I was stunned by that at the time, still wondering what I’d done.  Now I think maybe she was right.  Sometimes you just have to move on.  I think part of the moving on is that you do so with a loving heart.

Once I said I would make for you a string of prayer beads.  You asked that there be 108 of them.  I haven’t forgotten.  Don’t be surprised when they arrive one day.  Know that each bead was strung with care, and prayers for your well being.  I hope that life is treating you well, that you are happy and finding lots of reasons to laugh.

Take care and be well,

Lynn

UPDATE:  I recently read something (on Facebook of course!)  that kind of relates to this post, and I found somehow comforting.  It’s this:

“When people walk away from you, let them go…Your destiny is never tied to anyone who leaves you, and it doesn’t mean they are bad people.  It just means that their part in your story is over.”  I like this quote a lot.  That’s it.

A Job Interview and Friends

This is a story about a job interview that happened to someone I know.  It’s also about friendship.  It doesn’t really matter who it was, because learning from others is a good thing, I think.  Sometimes a really good thing.  (The photo above is just for decoration because the person who had this interview would rather not share a personal photo here in this post.  Too bad I don’t know how to blur the face or make it just a profile…but I digress)

WAIT.  I started this post topic because it was WordPress’s topic suggestion of the day, and this one particular interview is something that has gnawed at me for a long time and I thought that if I wrote about it because they said so, I could do so in a light manner and not keep it inside any more.  But it seems that I can’t write about it yet.  Maybe never, not even if I pretend it happened to someone else, which of course it didn’t (doh…I knew you wouldn’t fall for that, not really).  This particular experience was the source of a painful outcome, about which I am still conflicted, even months later.

I just tried again…I guess the painful outcome part is what is the issue, not the interview.  In a nutshell, I wasn’t sure I wanted the job, really wasn’t the best candidate for it and didn’t get it.  Ho-hum.  I applied because someone I cared for and trusted suggested I do so, and wrote me a really nice recommendation letter.  I didn’t want to waste  the letter, and I trusted him, so I applied.  He was on the interview committee, so would know if I didn’t apply.  He was also the one who called the candidates afterward, to announce the outcome.  During the phone call to tell me I didn’t get the job, every answer I made during the interview was dissected for me, every weak answer duly noted.  Apparently all but one was weak.  That phone call is the last time we’ve spoken, and that is what is hard to let go of.   Was it not worthwhile to be friends with someone who would be less than stellar in an interview?  Was that friendship just done?  I hadn’t thought so, but maybe it was.

I have a theory about friendship that goes kind of like this:  We meet people over the course of our lives because they have something to teach us, or we have something to teach them.  Or maybe it’s not about teaching, maybe it’s something else, like creating something or helping someone.  Probably something I don’t even have words for.  I just don’t think people enter our lives accidentally.  Clearly some have a greater purpose than others.  I mean, saying hello to someone in the grocery store probably doesn’t have a long range purpose, but who knows?  Following this idea, we don’t continue all friendships at the same level forever.  Think how crowded our lives would be by the time we got old if that were the case.

This makes me think about Facebook.  A couple of days ago I was thinking about all the people who are my “friends” and decided to thin the pack a little.  First, I blocked some too-young friends (I made the mistake of accepting 5 students who are no longer mine, but are not yet 18) from seeing my wall posts.  I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by deleting them, so took that route.  Then I went through and deleted a few people who have clearly passed through and are on the other side of our relationship.  The thing that was hard about this?  Deciding when a friendship has run its course.  We can sort of artificially prolong friendships through digital means these days, and I was trying to decide which of my 327 friends were those.  This time through I only managed to release about 15 of them.  But I’ll be back.  Trying to keep it relevant.  One day I hope to get better at recognizing which friendships have fulfilled their purpose and can be allowed to fade gracefully and which need more time and deserve further maintenance.