Connections

I’m one of those people who is comfortable in small circles and, as such, I have a small group of friends whom I’ve known for many years. It once was a point of pride for me to know that the people I’ve known since Junior High School are still amongst my closest friends. However as we’ve gotten older and our lives have become ever more unlike one another’s, I find that the connections we’ve maintained for so long are growing thin and strained. It’s not an active tension, rather it’s more a gradual dissolution. We’ve all grown apart.

I guess in some ways it’s inevitable. Some friends have married, some have children and some have moved. Our careers and life choices have diverged in many different ways. Our personalities, always very different, have been the driving forces of change in our lives and that change, on a personal level, often impacts the larger circle of our friends. I, for example, have spent much of my time focusing on my work. I’ve moved across the country and back for new job opportunities, changed careers and worked to exceed at each new endeavor. This stressful choice of mine led me to work long, strange hours and was probably a leading cause of my heart attack. It has also resulted in a modicum of success for me. The unintended result of this choice, other than the heart attack, is that I’ve devoted less time to maintaining contact with my friends and family. A positive result of the heart attack is that I’ve made good progress reconnecting with my family. Now my thoughts turn to my friends.

An interesting facet of my friendships with members of “the group” is the nature in which we orbit one another’s lives. Often we can be incommunicado for months and months yet as soon as we’re together again it’s as though no time has passed. This happened more when we were younger. Now that we’re older I’m finding that the gulfs between our worlds are expressed in awkward silences or the retelling of stories from decades earlier. It’s possible that these stories are the only connections left between us, though I find that a disheartening thought. Of course, these uncomfortable situations only occur when we spend time together, which is very rare.

The easiest thing to do is just to pick up the phone and reach out again. When I decided to make more of an effort at staying connected, I didn’t intend to isolate myself to either friends or family, as I just wanted to reconnect with everyone who was important to me. Yet I’ve not been as faithful in contacting my friends as I have my family, and I wonder why. Sometimes it’s because I leave message after message and never get a call back, which I take as a kind of hint to leave those folks alone, whether they intend it to be that way or not. Sometimes it’s because it’s been so long that the awkwardness of just reaching out again seems so overwhelming that I just don’t dial the numbers, as stupid as that sounds (and is). Still other times it’s because I have so little in common with some of my friends these days that there’s just nothing to talk about, no common ground.

And yet these are nothing but excuses and justifications. The simple fact of the matter is that if I value the friendships I have, I will reach out to everyone and find new ground upon which we can meet. We’re all very different people, but that which differentiates us is also that which I value. I can’t learn and grown from people who exactly like me, not that I’ve met many, nearly as much as I can from those people who have come from the same place as me but made different choices. They know me and my (many) faults, yet they’ve tolerated them to varying degrees all these years. Yes, they have their faults and they’ve sometimes been bad friends, but the exact same can be said for me. That we all can still get together and talk after a couple of decades (Gods, but we’re old) is a feat of which we can all be proud.

This then is my goal: to call each of my old friends and just catch up with them. They’re not heavy, they’re my brothers (and sisters).

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 9:28pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.