Musings on topics of small or large importance. Especially partial to subjects that include baby boomers, public figures, friends, Corporate America, the Denver Broncos, NASCAR, my previous home towns of New York City and Columbia (Maryland), stupidity (mine and others'), diets and health and who knows what else!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

New-World Friendship

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" has been attributed to everybody from Chinese general Sun-tsu in 400 BC to Abraham Lincoln to The Godfather's Michael Corleone.

Friends don't always act like friends. A human resources manager told me that the worst clashes in the workplace occur between best friends. They tend to be the most volatile and the rifts often remain permanent.

I've had my so-called best friends deliberately go after the men in my life, and I know my mom's best friends did the same. Fortunately for both of us, that was a long time ago, and those women are long out of our lives.

Two very close friends have fired me, both men, both for things that, in my opinion, were not worth losing a friendship over. One woman friend long ago, one who deliberately sought out a guy I had, uh, dated and she, uh, dated him, fired me after she got fired from her job and I ended up with it a couple of months later. She was so vain that she wanted someone incompetent to get the job so she could look better. As it turned out, I didn't do much better in the job than she had, though for different reasons. (No film at 11)

Come to think of it, another so-called friend went after a guy I'd been very involved with and was still emotionally attached to, the most significant relationship in my life to date at that time. He's the one who told me about it, not her.

It's easier to be friends with people now, in the new world, I think, than ever before, mainly because less is required of each individual friend. The Internet has changed things; our mobility and wanderlust have changed things; lack of job security has changed things. We no longer grow up with, work with and are in the same geographical area with the same few people for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. We don't look to a small circle of friends to meet all of our needs. Our friends (mine, anyway) are spread out all over the country -- the world, actually. They fall into diverse categories. There's one for every mood, need, task and activity.

Now with the online world, especially twitter (which I love!), I feel that I have friends I've never met. I'm not sure I could count on them to bail me out of jail, but I can count on them to provide information, comfort, names and numbers of other resources, and most of them would do what they could to support my efforts, whatever they are. How cool is that?

I used to have a best friend, growing up. Now I have more than one best friend, a lot of good friends, many good pals, and a ton of acquaintances who turn into friends at different times. There are some I like but don't trust, some I trust but don't like so much, some I can tell anything to, some I have narrow conversations with, some who are for fun, some who keep me on track, some who help me go off track. I love my friends; I love having lots and lots of friends. I like the diversity of my friends. I like that I can cultivate so many different sides of myself with my different friends.

My spiritual advisor for the past 25 years tells me that no one is another's friend, that we are all each other's teachers. I like that idea. I can see it, that we are there for each other as teachers, sometimes in ways we like, sometimes not. I like the positive spin on it. But I am not giving up my friends!