Friends

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Originally uploaded by texasgawain

At lunch today I was a bit nostalgic so I started musing over the nature of the relationships in my life and naturally that brought me to thinking about my friends. You can see a few of them in the photo here... but its far from representative, I have many good friends not in the photo.

If you listen to mainstream psychology, oprah, and most media in general, you'll hear that friends are something to cherish. You'll also hear that you have to be a good friend to have good friends. I agree with them up to that point.

Most will also say that if your friends should reflect who you are, and that if you have friends with too many problems, or requiring too much maintenance you should probably cut them loose. This is where I tend to diverge, but I'll go ahead and lay out the mainstream view first.

Wealthy people have wealthy friends, people of faith tend to maintain friends who also share their spiritual views, which may make their faith stronger. People naturally gravitate towards one another when they share a lot of common views and principles, not to mention similar lifestyles and vantage points.

According to the popular line of thought, one of the best things you could do to improve your own situation, is to cultivate friendships with people that you want to be more like, or with people that bring positive insights, influence or energy into your life. Again, they're basically correct.

Now its my turn.

I generally ignore the advice listed above, even though it is essentially correct. I don't do this for purely emotional reasons, although I never really reasoned it out before today. As an only child, I was given to very strong friendships since the very beginning, perhaps to make up for my own lack of siblings. So much so, that most of my 'friends' would probably fall under the category of what some people consider family.

By that I mean that my friends definitely cross into the boundaries of my life that many would only consider allowing to their families. A lot of my friends are from my early years, if not from my early childhood as well. As such, I"ve grown with them, shared many embarassing experiences, shown them my darker side, cried with them, fought with them... etc...

The degree of trust that comes from such deep roots goes beyond the conventional meaning of trust. I don't just trust them not to steal my money, or lie to me, or say something I might not like to hear when I'm not around. In fact, my trust with my friends doesn't pertain to those things at all, they're human. I wouldn't doubt I've had a friend borrow a few dollars from me (although its fairly unlikely). I'd find it impossible to believe many of them hadn't lied to me at some point.

Truth is, those things aren't that important to me. I've gotten more money from friends, than I ever lost. I expect my friends to be tactful and tell me I look good sometimes even if I don't. And the occasional gossip that permeates human society doesn't bother me a bit.

The trust I have in my friends is quite different. Its more like the sort of trust you'd find in a mafia family I suppose. I believe that almost no matter what sort of crime I committed (if I were a criminal), I could tell almost any friend I know, and they'd keep it to themselves. Most of them would lie for me, if I asked, and some would go so far as to become accomplices to protect me if necessary.

Each of my friends is different, they have their own strengths and weaknesses, some are brave, some are not. Some are highly intelligent, some are more ordinary. Some are close to saintly, others are darker, and one of my best friends (now departed) was a desperate drug addict.

Supposing I had a great and pressing need, I could depend on any of them to support me, according to their abilities and situations. Most of them have families, and we all have many relationships in our lives, so I wouldn't ask things of them that they'd be unwilling to give anyway.

But if I had committed some great crime, robbed a bank, embezzled millions, or gone nuts one day and murdered someone, I suspect that most of them, would at the very least, keep mum, if not help me. Before continuing though, I like to say if I did have some huge problem like that I'd avoid involving most of them Anyway.. all that was hypothetical.

The point I'm making is this, I work in a highly professional place, surrounded by smart, upstanding, people of great integrity. Although I suppose many would consider them 'friends', I think of them more like close acquaintances. Relative to my long term friendships... well that's what they are. They're just the sort of people that Dr. Phil would probably encourage me to spend all my time with.

But I don't care, they wouldn't take a bullet for me, and most of the people I call friends probably would.

So I have a group of friends that many would call eclectic, weird, or in some cases insane (see above image right side). The picture above doesn't even do justice to how many friends I have, there are many more.

I measure my wealth by the depth of my friendships, not by the wealth or even the character of my friends. I think few people have been as blessed as I have, to have so many close friends, and for that I'm grateful.