Today I read a post of Dave’s that resonated so strongly with some of the things that have been running through my head for the last few months that I feel compelled to contribute. I’ve been thinking an awful lot about the nature of friendship lately, since I find myself surrounded on a daily basis with people who don’t seem to place the same importance on it that I do. To the point that I was starting to think it was just something about Torontonians and ready to chalk it up to, “ah, this is why the rest of the country thinks these people are assholes. Because they are.”
But I can’t blame Toronto. I have actually met one or two people here that I adore. There’s even one native I’m quite fond of, even if I do always have to be the one to e-mail first. Ahem.
So then I think, “maybe it’s me. Maybe people just don’t like me. Maybe there are just other things they’d rather do with their time than spend it getting close to me.”
But then I go back to Pennsic. And within the first 15 minutes I spend in camp, every single person I met last year comes over to give me a hug and welcome me back. At least half of them with the following mid-hug dialogue:
Me: Hi! How are you!
Them: Better now that you’re here!
These people I spent a week with a year ago and haven’t seen since value my friendship more than those I see and talk to every single day. They genuinely love me, and look forward to seeing me, and I them. And recent positive real-life experiences with a group of online foodie types has me convinced that I do not, in fact, have some sort of social venereal disease. I AM NOT DISPOSABLE TO EVERYONE.
The older we get, the harder it is to make friends. We get stuck in our ways, and start to think, “I have enough.” But some of us don’t have the option to just shut down the factory – we don’t spend our entire lives in the same area, hanging out with the same core group of people. We grew up…moving away from our families…changing our environment with each new stage of life. We take the most important people with us in our hearts, but you can’t take an e-mail with you to lunch. And I am not sure I can take going to any more lunches with people who don’t give a shit whether I’m there or not.
Someone who is not really a friend but definitely not a stranger once said to me something like, “I have never known someone that I felt changed me.” I’m not sure I see the point in spending time with anyone who hasn’t. People should not be static. If you’re not Jesus (and last I checked, none of us are – I don’t see any Horsemen…do you?), then you’d have to be unbelievably arrogant to think that there’s nothing about you that could stand improvement, or that you are the only one who can see your flaws.
Yes, I have met people lately that have left me more bitter and cynical than I ever have been before. But in the long run, that doesn’t matter. The bitterness will fade from the back of my tongue, and I’ll be left with only the good that I took from those people – the things they taught me, the fond memories we made. I’ll know I’m in serious trouble the day I can no longer achieve that. Among the readers of this blog, there are some of you to whom I am just an internet ghost that doesn’t exist outside the glow of a computer screen. Some of you would probably be my friends if we met in real life, others wouldn’t. But the rest of you have known me since…what? College? High school? Even earlier than that, in some cases. And you people are here for no other reason than because I asked you to be. You have each had a hand in making me the ridiculous person I am today, and are the ones I carry in my pocket so I never have to eat lunch or go to a movie alone. You have forever changed me in very specific ways, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you I have been changed for good.
-Stephen Schwartz
