As people grow up, sometimes the different paths of life mean that friendships grow apart. This seems to be a natural sort of progression. Oftentimes, our friendships are primarily held together by the mere locality that we shared.
It is so easy, then, to mistake the concept of proximity for the presence of depth. In high school, college, or the workplace, we become friends simply by constant association. Given another set of circumstances, it is unlikely that we would be friends at all.
When many people come to college, I’ve noticed that there is a “shedding” of their old high school friendships. Friendships fall away that were only connected by mere location. The precious few friendships that were enjoined by something deeper are kept.
These are the friendships that are worth fighting for. This entails actual effort. Social networking, cell phones, and even email have removed the vast majority of work from a friendship. But if you aren’t working at it, what exactly do you have?
Psuedo-community is typified by the presence of knowledge about another person but without the contextual or conversational basis to build an actual relationship. I might know your interests, some thoughts you are willing to share, your current summer plans … but knowing the essential and meaningful parts of someone is very different from that checklist of publishable information.
If you happen to “resurrect” a lost friendship through the ad-supported necromancy of the internet, what happens after the initial rush of reconnection? Often (although there are certainly exceptions) it peters back into the normal habits that typified that relationship before. Resurrected friendships are often zombie-friendships … not reborn ones.
I don’t ever want to be so focused on recreating, reliving, or reminiscing about the friendships I had in the places I was such that I forget to be fully engaged in the people and friendships that are right here in front of me.
That understanding notwithstanding, sometimes you find a friendship that lasts beyond your physical proximity. That is a friendship of depth … not place … and it is one worth fighting for. Effort expended in keeping those friendships is not wasted. It is the difference between keeping and resurrecting that divides depth-based from proximity- based relationships.
It is important to recognize that difference. When you find a deeper relationship, it is always worth keeping. It takes real work … but it seems that most worthwhile and important things always require actual labor. Call it the labor of love.
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Isn’t it neat how God weaves different friends and associations in and out of our lives? It is crazy even thinking, “What if I didn’t go ___________ ? (fill in blank)” or “What if I never did __________?” that the people we are friends with today, close or not, we might never have met.
Isn’t it neat also, how even though putting forth effort can be hard sometimes, the result is so fulfilling? Even exciting and an adventure?
I think a lot of people, myself included, can relate to much of what you wrote about, such as the shedding of high school friends as well as the “zombie” friends (on facebook in my case anyway) :)
I like your thoughts about what is worthwhile and the difference between depth and proximity. I think I have been learning a lot about these very things over the last year. This idea that it takes “labor” is extremely encouraging to me, especially as I think about trying to have more depth with my family and friends. It reminds me of, and you can relate to this, ranch (farm) work. It can be REALLY tough and hard, but in the end, it is totally worth it and rewarding. To see seeds or crops that one has labored over for hours and hours, watering, feeding, spending time and effort on, it is pretty awesome to see the fruits of that labor, energy and effort.
FRIENDSHIPS are rewarding- complexities and mysteries are EXCITING and WORTHWHILE.
And especially in the context you are speaking of, effort brings forth the discovery of depth– how exciting!
Zombie friends and the “ad supported necromancy of the internet”. You my friend, in your own little way, are a genius, pure and simple. That and I happen to agree with you. That helps.
I was actually telling my brother yesterday how to a certain extent I felt like Facebook and other forms of networking media had created a sort of placebo sense of relationship that in some cases caused you to neglect those people that actually surrounded you. It’s flat out easier to be “friended” than to befriend. You get all the self-absorbed relational tummy rubbing you need without ever really giving back to those people you claim as friends. Being an emotional black hole was never so much fun without the internet.
And I do appreciate your friendship. We need to do early morning coffee again sometime when you are in my neck of the woods. :)
Ben