12_14_2021

The Extraordinary Gift of Friendship

                I think about friendship frequently as it is a unique gift in our lives. At the same time, since each of our friendships is unique,  we can experience a range of pleasures and challenges presented by each relationship. I had the pleasure of listening to the Irish Poet David Whyte present a podcast on friendship on Sunday, December 12, 2021.

                Not only were his remarks moving and beautifully presented, but they also served as a wonderful framework for gaining deeper insights on the less described gifts that they offer us. On a surface level, I think of good friends as people I am comfortable sharing parts of myself with. Each relationship offers me a unique realm of common sharing that offers  companionship as we journey through our lives.

                No two of my friendships consist of identical issues that we enjoy sharing. I marvel at long-standing friendships that have a history of thirty plus years. The longevity of such relationships makes it possible to share changes that naturally occur in one’s life. I am fortunate that friendships that owe their origins to work environments have become friendships that have lasted beyond the issues we encountered in the workplace. I’ve found it rare though for close relationships in the work environment to sustain the connection once one or both of us move onto another work setting.

                One of the challenges of friendship relationships is that we don’t typically enter these relationships with the same level of formal commitment that one does when entering a contractually governed relationship like marriage. If my experience is common to others, such relationships come with challenges on how to address the adjustment in a relationship that typically accompanies changes in the lives of the participants. For example, I lived with women I met in college for a number of years after we graduated. We were teaching in the same area and shared multiple apartments together. But as my friends married and started a family, it meant they had more demands on their time and less time to gather with single friends.

                There’s a loss experienced, but that loss is difficult to address as there’s no harm intended; the lack of availability to spend time together is indicative that one’s life has moved onto the next chapter. I recall feeling the loss that resulted from our evolving lives, but poorly equipped with strategies to stay connected or to express my appreciation for the gifts that I experienced in those relationships.

                I’m finding that as we age, we need to  anticipate that there are surprises in our relationships that result from how we each respond to the process of aging. I’ve witnessed friends who decide that they want to relocate after living in another state for thirty years to where they grew up so that they can be near family or relatives who they hope will care for them as they become frailer. While I can understand the motivation, selfishly I experience it as a potential loss of connection in my life.

                As people retire, there are choices about how one spends time now that the restrictions of going to work every day no longer apply. There are options to relocate for better or more ideal weather during the seasons. I’ve witnessed friends initially going to Florida for a month to escape the cold that accompanies winters in the Northeast. It isn’t unusual to see patterns of extending the time in warmer climates to several months away. All of these evolving patterns in our lives lead to changes and adjustments in our lives. I’ve come to accept that we all make these kinds of decisions from a viewpoint of what  will bring us the greatest pleasure. We certainly don’t decide to spend time in the warmer or cooler climates as a way of hurting our friends.

                But again, these are changes that occur in long-standing relationships. One of the harder separations I’ve experienced is witnessing the tendency of friends to withdraw and begin to hunker down close to home as they age. This pattern seems to occur in response to fleeing the anxieties that one might experience in traveling to or spending time in more crowded spaces.

                Let me circle back to one of my opening statements in which I expressed my observation that we seem to have to learn how friendships work, particularly how they can become less available, as we each choose to follow the urges that pull us in new directions in our lives. Had I had a better understanding when I was younger of the temporary nature of a friendship, I might have expressed my appreciation for the relationship and taken the time to realize the gifts I was receiving.

                A challenge that I periodically encounter in long-standing friendships is to monitor my expectations of friends. This challenge is more likely to occur in those friendships where we have years of history of repeating many of the same rituals. For example, if for the last decade we have gathered together on New Year’s Eve to welcome in the New Year, when one of us makes different plans, it can feel like rejection. But feelings of rejection stem from expectations that we hold that any ritual is everlasting.

                 It is at these junctures that I find David Whyte’s insights so calming and reassuring. He definitely captures the essence of what friendships offer us, as well as what they require if they are to survive. I’ll share his comments that can be found in his book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Under Friendship, he offers the following:

“Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses, as we must find it in ourselves                    to forgive them in turn…All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness.  Without tolerance and mercy, all friendships die.

To remain friends, we must know the other and their difficulties, and even their sins, and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging  what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.

The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life…

 But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long, close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of  having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have  accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey                                impossible to accomplish alone.”               

Whenever I read these words so beautifully presented, I concentrate on the great gifts bestowed on me through friendships. I concentrate on the gift of witnessing and sharing part of the journey of life with those I love and care for.