Praise Song for the Day: In Praise of The Three Rules of Friendship
Thursday, February 4, 2021
“No, we’re not!”
I’m not proud of what I did or what I said.
I repeated: “No, we’re not. This is it. After this year, we’re done. We aren’t going to be friends anymore.”
All of our high school years came crashing to an end. I wasn’t mad at him and he wasn’t mad at me, but my solution was just to stop being friends. Just like that, I had pronounced the end of our friendship and it came out of the blue. At least on his end, it did. I had been thinking about making this not so clean break for a while, which means that the killing off of our friendship was premeditated. Does that mean I was a murderer? The killer of a relationship?
I justified: Back then, phone calls were expensive, and traveling back home was even more so. I mean, I wasn’t going to be calling any dude from college 857 miles away. He was moving downstate to his school in Illinois, and I was headed out of state to a so-called fancy college in Connecticut. I didn’t think I had a big head, but some of my family members, one significantly important teacher, and the freshman girl who broke up with me would probably beg to differ. Oh yeah, and our other friends were probably thinking, what the fuzz!! In my own rationale, I just did not want any attachments or tentacles sinking into me, holding me back as I left home. It would mean that I would probably never come back. Bottom line, I was a crap friend. In retrospect, I was ONLY thinking about myself.
What should I have done? If I could go back and give myself a bit of advice (or a good talking to), what would I say? Three things, which are:
PROXIMITY: ALWAYS KEEP FRIENDS NEAR AND GOOD FRIENDS NEARER:
Be close to someone. It is not a badge of honor to go it alone. It’s a well-documented myth that people are self-made. By keeping friends near, investing in their happiness and well being, makes our own experiences with ourselves broader, more intimate, and better. Over the years, appreciating the closeness of a good friend, even if it’s over the phone or on the disorienting Zoom platform, allows for me to see the person I really am: good, bad, and ugly.
COMPASSION: RELATIONSHIPS ARE ABOUT “SUFFERING WITH”:
Suffer with someone. That’s correct, if you are not in a growing thriving relationship, you can never really know compassion and you will not experience greatness. The idea of compassion is embedded in its Latin root, literally meaning to “suffer with.” We are who we are because we suffer in relationship “to” and “with” others. On the other part of the spectrum, you can never truly be great at anything alone.
BE CALLED, BE GREAT: FRIENDSHIPS MAKE US MORE THAN WHO WE ARE:
Heed the call to dive into relationships. Watching Micahel Jordan reminisce over his triumphs in the documentary series “The Last Dance,” showed that even the greatest athletes — not to be confused with the greatest people — cannot go it alone. As one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived, the documentary series focused not only on Michael but also his so-called “supporting cast.” The series reiterated that greatness happens when we not only challenge ourselves to be great but that we also are challenged and inspired and loved by others.
That’s what I was cutting off when I tried to go it alone. College was a miserable time for me. I struggled because when you think it’s about just you, you act in a way that limits the goodness of what the writer Julia Cameron calls “G.O.D. — Good. Orderly. Direction.” The Divine and our connection with others are one and the same. Even in Greek mythology, the famous warrior-king Odysseus left his son in the hands of his most trusted friend: Mentor. Mentor made sure that Odysseus’ son Telemachus would have the powerful relationship like he had, that would set his son straight and make him a good ruler. Odysseus’s friend and mentor became Telemachus’s friend and (M)entor. Little did either father or son realize that Mentor was actually the goddess Athena at times, leading both of them — Odysseus and Telemachus — through hardship and travails., eventually leading to triumph. Like Mentor, our friends can often be just the divine inspiration and actions that we all need and crave to be better people than we were.
I have since reconnected with my friend. He’s been very successful in his life, as have I. But, think of what we might have done together if we had stayed connected.
Action: Reach out to a friend that you have not connected in a while (Proximity). Listen to them and hear who they now are, what they have been dealing with, and how you both still remain connected (Compassion). Finally, offer back to them the positive of what you have heard as a kind of gift. Make sure that you do the same. Listen hard to all of what they tell you. Drive some “next steps” about your friendship. Whether it is just a next call, the offer to help their child get connected to someone who might help, or fleshing out that idea for a partnership, business, or trip you wanted to take together when you were kids. (Be called. Be Great.)
Trust me on this, you will be so glad that you opened your heart, stretched even just a little, to be who you were always meant to be.
— — — — —
Like a daily gratitude practice, Praise Song for the Day will be a way of appreciating what we know we know in a different and perhaps even profoundly deeper way. This column takes its name from a poem of the same title by Elizabeth Alexander called “Praise Song for the Day” delivered twelve years ago at the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Clap back if you dig the piece. Go watch Alfre Woodard in something new if you really, really dig the piece.
