“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
What makes a friend? Is it merely common interests? Compatible senses of humor? Similar tastes in music and movies? The same belief system/world view/core doctrines? Can a Republican be friends with a Democrat? Can a Catholic be friends with a Presbyterian? (Baptists can’t. We have standards. <—joke. Settle down.) Can either of them be friends with a Muslim? An atheist? How can two walk together unless they be agreed?
The Pink Rose, in the Language of Flowers, means Friendship
Real friendship, I think, is deeper than these things, and, truly, these things go deep. Friendship is the melding of spirits, each fueling the other in order that both may grow and thrive. Real friendship takes time to grow.
Such treasures are not suited to mass marketing and social media. Facebook, oddly enough, that monstrous thing that now makes our friendships “legit”, has changed the way friendships are formed, how they grow, and how they are destroyed. It would seem, were one to look at Facebook in order to determine what a friend is, that friends are people who think/believe/vote exactly as you do, have the same tastes in humor and entertainment as you do, more or less the same socio-economic status and educational levels, like the same sports teams and the same ice creams, and hang out in the same sorts of places on Saturday nights.
Often difficult soil in which friendship can grow.
It has happened a thousand times: someone is “friended”, then, after one too many sappy religious “share if you love Jesus/rainbows/my-uncle-who-has-cancer/puppies/suffering children in Zambia” memes, one too many statuses full of bowling words, or one too many political rants, they find themselves in a public bare-fisted brawl, which draws in all sorts of folks who take sides. Such battles often test the strength of a relationship, and they put on vivid display one’s capacity for empathy, one’s ability to discuss something that matters to them without forcing their opinion on others, and they are often displays of a person’s ability to be kind, their propensity for rudeness, and their level of commitment to the relationship with the person with which they are arguing. Facebook is becoming the battleground where Kindness is dying.
Can this one last?
This is all too real during Presidential election cycles, with the vitriol and anger of both sides (and the ceaseless crying from the heartbroken Ron Paul crowd) is completely over the top. Oftentimes, my Facebook feed looks like an episode of CNN’s old show, Crossfire, complete with the yelling and the temper tantrums.
Inevitably, in these public Facebook arguments, someone will be “unfriended.”(What a horrible word.) And, often people will announce this publicly, as though they were the executioner at a public hanging. Even worse, this status comes up on a fairly regular basis: “I’m cleaning out my friend-list. Comment if you want to remain on my list.” I find this tragic, and nearly repugnant. How easy we’ve made it to wipe people from our lives, as though they are not even there. If someone disagrees with me in a way I don’t like, or if they just don’t interact enough to suit me, then they’re out. Facebook, while good in its place, is starting to become a place where we publicly segregate our personal relationships. It is becoming “a place for people who think just like me.” What a small world we live in.
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Water your thoughts with kindness; friendship is a valuable and tender thing.
If friendships can be undone by a political argument, a passionately expressed opinion, a difference in world view, doctrine or theology, or even the quiet that comes when lives are traveling different paths, then you are swimming in the shallow end of friendship. If relationships are only feel “real” if they are on public display via the most current social media flavor-of-the-month, then they lack depth. This is a hard thing, because one must understand that they are themselves *enough* as they are. One should not need clones of themselves to validate their own worth.
To be a friend, love people as they are, accept them, and encourage their growth. It’s okay if you have friends that vote/believe/speak differently than you do. That doesn’t make them or you wrong. It makes you individuals.