What Do You Want… from Your Friendships?
People have widely varying definitions of the word, “friend.” What do you feel makes someone your friend? What do want and expect from a true friendship?
“I’d like you to meet my friend…”
That phrase is almost reflexive when introducing people to each other. Imagine that one of those people has been your close friend since childhood and the other is someone you met in business recently. Is it possible, on any level, that the childhood friend resents being categorized as the same as a new acquaintance?
Getting Past the Semantics
Friend, acquaintance, buddy, pal, neighbor, are all words used to connote the nature of a relationship, yet we often use them interchangeably. The business “friend” in the example is probably more of an “acquaintance.” Adjectives like “long-time” may help us to better qualify the level of closeness we have with the childhood buddy.
But that’s just words. Semantics. Underneath, there is much more to consider.
Time and Frequency
Is friendship defined by how often we spend time with someone? There are people all around us every day that are probably not friends. Co-workers for example. Other people in your place of business who you work with every day. You may feel friendly toward them, but seldom do they all become your friends. When you were younger the same was true of your classmates. You spent hours with them daily, but only a few became your real friends.
This suggests that spending time together often is not a prerequisite of friendship. For myself, it took growing to adulthood to come to understand this better. My best friend has been my best friend for over 50 years. For the past 40 of them or more we have probably seen or spoken to one another only a handful of times per year. We both have busy lives, professional careers, we live far from each other.
But here’s the thing. When we do speak with each other, it’s as if no time has passed at all. Our feelings for each other are still completely there. Our appreciation of each other easily survives the time and distance. We don’t agree on everything, but when we speak, we always seem able to come to mutual understanding. It’s always so comfortable, and comforting, to speak with him. Although our families spent very little time together, our children consider us to be their uncle. I don’t know if its definable, but I don’t really feel it has to be. I derive great satisfaction from knowing he’s out there.
It's Not What We Do, but it is What We Would Do
A friend of mine called recently to ask for my help with something. He started the phone call by apologizing for not being in touch for such a long time and then calling just to ask for something.
His apology shook me. I explained to him that he didn’t need to feel the need to apologize. He’s my friend, and as a friend I’m always there for him, always willing to do what I can for him. That truly came from my heart, and it gladdened me that he was calling and giving me the opportunity to be of help, to be of service to him.
I cannot think of anything I’ve done for him for more than a decade, but when he asked, I was more than happy to help. I believe most of us feel that way. It is truly more blessed to give than to receive. Giving makes us feel really good about ourselves. One of the nicest things you can do for me is to give me an opportunity to do something for you and let me feel that great feeling.
Life is Short
Most of us live very busy lives. We have work, family, neighborhood and community responsibilities, and much more going on in our lives. It is inconceivable to spend as much time with as many people as we’d like to. This means we need to be more demanding about how we spend our time. We need to be more deliberate and exercise more decision-making control over where we spend our time.
We need to actively think about who we want to spend time with.
But that has nothing to do with our feelings of friendship. Often, we cannot spend a fraction of the time we’d like to with our closest friends. This hurts most when one of our close friends passes away. We almost always wish we’d had spent more time with that. Realistically, that thought is pointless. You can’t change it, and the absence did not damage the quality of the friendship.
Life is short, and our responsibility to ourselves is to spend as much of our time experiencing joy as possible. Some of us feel joy when we’re doing something we love to do. Some feel joy when spending time with friends and loved ones. Joy comes from many sources and in many different ways. As the time in our lives ticks away it is worthwhile to mindfully consider what we most want to be doing with our time, and who we most want to spend it with. The trick is to be realistic about our own capacity for activity, for love, for friendship, and for joy.