Standing the Test of Time
Sherrey Meyer’s guest blog last week explored the ways in which social media has altered how we think about friendship. This past Sunday, NY Times columnist David Brooks, weighed in on what he saw as the essential and universal aspects of friendship. Both essays are well worth reading.
But both left me pondering the “why and wherefore” of my own friendships over the years. Neither essay quite captured my own experience.
As I look back, I have been blessed with many wonderful friends, but only a few who have “stood the test of time,” only a few with whom I can pick up where I left off, no matter how long it has been since I last saw them.
I think it’s because friendships, so often, are situational. You work in the same office or for the same company. You volunteer for the same charity. You are in same bridge club or book club or investment group. Your kids are on the same team. But when your world changes—you get a new job or leave town or get a divorce—the friendship begins to fray around the edges. As your immediate interests diverge, you talk less often. Eventually the relationship devolves to birthday or holiday cards and the occasional lunch when your paths happen to cross. The emotional memory remains strong, but the “friendship” itself is gone.
Don’t get me wrong. Friendships are to be treasured, however long they last. Shared interests and values make such relationships comforting, while educational, political and religious differences make the conversations stimulating. Such friendships offer critical support to each other during life crises, and as Brooks suggests, provide a powerful motivation for us to live up to what our friends believe to be.
A striking feature of many of these situational friendships, particularly those formed during my working life, is how silo-ed they have been. For many years, my bridge club friends did not know my community service friends. My book club friends did not know my work mates. Each friendship satisfied a genuine aspect of my personality and/or character, but few friends ever saw the “whole” of me.
By contrast, the friends who have stood the test of time are those made when my life was not compartmentalized, in periods when I was not consumed by busy-ness. A few date back to my youth, when we were still trying to decide who we would be when we grew up. Others appeared during periods of transition in my life. What these friends share is that we got to see—and all too often had to endure—all the dimensions of each other’s personality and character. We got the bad along with the good.
Because we have come to know the “whole” of each other, the friendships do not depend on knowing the same people, or working with the same clients. Having shared our dreams and our aspirations, these friendships have been able to “grow, ” to remain alive and vibrant and mutually supportive, even as friends and spouses and specific life challenges have changed.
How have the important friendships in your life been formed? I would love to hear your experience.
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