Friendship

Imagine this: we're all in a darkened room, a large room like a sports arena. Everyone gets issued a box. This particular box is like the box you made for grade school valentine's day cards. And then we're set free into this large darkened room. We're tasked with collecting friends. We will collect friends like small valentine's day cards and put them in the box. The first one who has their box overflowed with friends wins the game.

I wonder if this is the way we collect friends, or if this is the perception of the collecting friends. In this way, we take a two dimensional representation of a friends and file it into a box simply called “friend.” In 1842 Russian writer and satirist Nikolai Gogol's book Lost Souls set about describing upper middle class Russian life as defining wealth with the number of serfs one owned. Of course, with the more serfs someone owned, the more taxes that person paid. Gogol's main character Chichikov set about the countryside to buy the souls of dead serfs which he got at a good price. Those who sold him dead souls were free from the taxes they'd otherwise have to pay. And Chichikov? Well, on paper he seemed very rich. We may not collect lost souls, but we do collect friends & followers. I don't see how this is any different from Chichikov collecting souls of dead serfs in order to seem more wealthy or powerful.

If there is something that the last ten years has taught me, it is that collecting souls (or social media friends) seems more like an exercise in the absurd than anything else. It seems like people who you may or may not have ever met face to face can be called “friend” and they are lumped with those people you've known your whole life whose real title maybe friend, or brother or grandmother. Whereas I do not think that friend has changed, I do think what we classify as friend has.

With the wealth of data in the ether and more and more being added daily, everyone willingly gives out all their stats: name, location, relationship status or what they had for breakfast. With a few keystrokes, it is probable that anyone you've ever know is instantly traceable, instantly findable, and instantly contacted. When contact is made, then what?

I have always preferred walking as my favorite mode of transportation. When I walk I see the path ahead of me and the scenery on either side. When I feel bad or low or even sick, a walk always helps. In this way, I've often thought about walking as life. And when I think about the length of life and considered it as a walk, what a long, slow journey it is. It's a long walk from the beginning to the end. And anytime there has been a friend walking alongside, what an enjoyable experience it is. Any given friend you may walk with and for however long, is a real blessing. Even the closest of friends may only walk along side of you for a brief time, but it's the quality rather than the quantity. Always be grateful for what time you have with those with whom you walk, or cal friend, it is always time well spent.

But do we need to walk with all of our friends all the time? How long can we carry the valentine's day box filled with “friends” before the realization that these are just the representation of friends and not the friends themselves? How long will it take to realize that this is no way to treat a friend, and this is no way to be a friend to another? Collecting lost souls is one thing, right Chichikov?

When the friends path diverges from our own, is it not right to embrace the friend before he goes his way? If you think about it, when you truly love a friend, it is the mutual expectation that both parties want the best for the other. Sometimes the best for each individual comes in those diverging paths. It's not so much that the friendship has ended more than that portion of the walk has ended. There will be other friends up the path and the journey of life continues.

We have the ability to keep track of all friends via a digital middleman. We can keep track of everyone we've ever known despite not having seen them in years, or perhaps lifetimes. We can look at the representation of the life of long lost friends in pictures and little snippets of words and try to puzzle together what has transpired since the last meeting.

Sometimes, we cannot do this. Sometimes our friends from the past are gone, simply gone. They have moved away or moved on. They have not subscribed to the fever of social media of our time. Perhaps they have stopped walking and are no longer available for a more permanent reason. Back in the darkened sports arena, that friend's card in the box is just no longer there.

I find it to be romantic just thinking about what has become of long lost friends. There is a very real feeling when you think about a friend, and how there is no way of finding them in this wide world. Perhaps this particular friend belonged to you and no one else you know. Perhaps this friend was one of those situational friends that was a friend of time and space. These are the friends you knew in the neighborhood or in school or at work. These are the friendships that are based around a specific time or place. When one or the other of the time or space balance is interrupted, someone moves, say, or school or work finishes, this ends the friendship. No matter how close you were to that friend, time has moved on. Years later, the thought of the person comes up. You look them up on social media and see that things have changed for them too. Or perhaps you don't look them up. You just send out your goodwill into the universe and hope them well in life and in love.