I heard from a long-time friend yesterday, someone I hadn't talked to in quite a few years. During college and for several years after he and I were closely connected and stayed in regular contact. As so often happens as we move through our lives, however, we lost touch after a while, and went several years without hearing from each other. But, through the wonders of Facebook (the social network that seems to be almost exclusively staked out by middle-aged people at this point), we found each other a little while ago, and yesterday we had out first real time, voice to voice conversation in quite a while.
It was one of those times that you've probably experienced before, as if we'd had taken a brief break in an already on-going conversation, and then picked it back up with, "Okay, so what was it you were saying?" We laughed in the same way, shared the same confidence and fear about life and ourselves, expressing some of the same hopes and doubts, only now through a middle-aged filter. God, it was so good to talk to him, this life-long friend of mine, the older brother I never had until he came into my life all those years ago. Some face to face time for later this year was discussed, and is greatly hoped for.
These re-connections always leave me wondering about both friendship and what it means to be the person I am. Friendship is a tricky thing, something I take very seriously, a fact that I have found over the course of my life places me in a minority. What most people call friendship is really nothing more than our being acquainted with certain surface facts about another person, all the while knowing little to nothing of the truth about that person, who they are in their most hopeful place, as well as in their darkest. One of my on-going frustrations is that it seems many people are satisfied with this surface acquaintance, as it makes the whole idea of friendship much more linear and sanitized than I believe it was ever meant to be. These surface acquaintances also allow others to rip you apart when the real truth of you, the one they never took the time to get to know, begins to come out, shattering not only their view of you, but also their view of themselves, pointing out the disconnect between what you might need from them and what they're willing, or maybe even equipped, to give another person.
When it comes to being myself, each time I re-connect with a true friend such as the one I spoke with yesterday, I can't help but be reminded of who I hoped to be all those years ago, as well as who I swore I'd never be, and how I've tricked myself a bit on both sides of that equation over the years. My friend yesterday reminded me that at least some, maybe even a lot, of the person who hoped to become certain things in his 20's still remains, only maybe the man in his 40's knows a bit more about what is worth becoming and what isn't than the guy in his 20's knew. He also reminded me that true friends also want to occupy the space of failure and it's accompanying pain with you, as the true friend knows that pain is sacred, but when shared becomes powerful and life-giving as well.
So, yesterday my friend and I gave a bit more oxygen to each other's dreams, as well as experienced a bit of the life that only pain can bring. We were and are two men still becoming, still hoping for the best, still believing we will find what it is we're looking for, and that we will celebrate those discoveries together.
It was great hearing from you JWD. It was also great to hear from myself.
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