To get any farther with my post here, you’ll have to go on reading it even when I tell you that I’m about to make a point by referring to the movieLord of the Rings and not to the books. This has been sticking with me.
Gandalf urges Bilbo: “All your long years, we’ve been friends.” He needs Bilbo to give up a ring that has become too special to Bilbo. It’s not good for him. “Trust me, as you once did,” Gandalf tells him.
And so Bilbo making a great effort holds out his hand and turns it over and he drops the fate of the world on his hobbit hole floor.
Gandalf again, in Moria, with others some of whom knew Bilbo—some maybe not—remarks casually about Bilbo’s gift of mithril from Thorin. “I never told him, but its worth was greater than the value of the Shire.” Gandalf didn’t tell Bilbo that—Bilbo, his friend. He tells others, some of whom Gandalf perhaps hardly knew. He tells these others that he didn’t tell Bilbo. It doesn’t bother him to do so. He throws it out as an interesting factoid for the road.
Bilbo meanwhile, at Rivendell, is at peace. He is not aware of any of this. Perhaps occasionally a stifled pang of yearning comes over him and he wishes he could briefly hold that old ring of his once again.
But he will never know that he had the fate of the world in an envelope over there on the mantelpiece, or rather in his pocket.
He’ll never know the value of the gift Thorin gave him. It was strong, and pretty. Quite a nice gift. Worth more than his house and the houses of everyone he knew—but he didn’t know.
There are different kinds of friends.
There may be an amount of time which it was reasonable for me to spend thinking about this, and I may have spent more than that amount.
Maybe some of my problem is that I’ve been looking to be a Jonathan to someone’s David when in fact to someone’s Gandalf I was a Bilbo.
It only took 32 years and I finally may begin to understand the first verse or two of “I Can’t Believe It”.
There is nothing new I could give to You Just a life that’s torn Waiting to be born
I need to listen to the whole song again, and others of his. As with Rich Mullins, there was life I had to live before I could discover the depth to the songs.
Rivers overflow Friends may come and go But You’ve been by my side With every tear I’ve cried
That bit—“Friends may come and go”. I fought that for so long, once I was even aware that it was there to be fought—I took for granted that friends stick around and that who’s close today will be close ever after. People that you have lived life with, especially in uniquely weird or formative times, seem fixtures, at least to the lazy and entitled mind. Once I knew that friends could drift apart I didn’t want to accept that it could happen in my own life.
And speaking in terms of human friends, there are friends who last for decades and (what feels like to me) multiple different lives of yours. There are ones who know you well and yet stick around and continue to know you, friends with whom you can be free and at ease and not wonder if they’re going to report the conversation to others afterward. They’re just hard to find.
God is not fully comprehended by finite human intellect and I don’t expect ever to have learned all that I could about Him and to sum up every reason I have to give Him praise. But there was a moment—so long as I’m “oversharing”, which is mostly what I do on this blog—when it so hit me that God is unchanging, that I thought: we could never “finish” praising Him for that alone.
What a contrast to us as friends is Jesus.
I know You never lie And so I’m giving up my pride So I can receive it
I have so much to learn. I need a lot more prayer and Bible reading. Maybe I could also listen to more Keith Green.
As anyone who has known me moderately well for very long in real life could tell you, I am (alas) the talkative type. I don’t do well at pausing to let others speak, or at prompting or encouraging them to speak. If not reminded, I can go on for some time about myself, what I have been doing or thinking, or other things to do with myself, or possibly with what I think of other people or happenings.
I am not a poet, so perhaps it’s partly my unmanliness. Where most guys—surely many if not most men—value time spent out golfing, or fishing or hunting or whatevering, with their friends, I value more time spent discussing: time with words, ideas, writing, reading, speaking. I have a particularly fond memory of one winter night spent with a friend in front of the fire, explicably (I’d say inexplicably, but it’s explicable: we were out West, where such things make sense) drinking coffee, and chatting of this and that. That was some free time spent together. For the poor folks I text, I tend to feel honored when they take time in their busy lives to write to me or to read what I write to them.
One companion of olden times I’ve somewhat kept in touch with. I did not know him as well as I wish I had, but when I could communicate with him he was always an incredible encouragement to me. Looking back I now wonder: was he very close to anyone hardly at all? He was a friendly and good acquaintance to many, but did he have friends?
I’ve been thinking for some while now (ironically perhaps, including a good bit of the time since I started this blog) about shutting up. How many times, regretting a particularly bad outcome or trouble I’ve caused someone else, I’ve made great resolves—“From now on, I will (or won’t) do XYZ”—and then failed to live up to them. So I won’t clearly make any such resolve here, but just ponder a bit what it might look like to shut up, and about the pros and cons.
Pros?
Your words may be somewhat more valued. I don’t think there’s a guarantee here. Causation and correlation, and all that sort of thing. But for the one or two persons I can think of who simply don’t say much very often, I do think it’s a bit more noticeable to me when they do speak up. Maybe that is just me. And presumably, in order to benefit from this you would need to refrain from speaking up except when it was important that others pay attention.
You are less likely to annoy people. People are all different. It may be rude, I think, to say too explicitly to someone that they’re annoying you by constant chatter, but some people will do that. Others won’t. I expect that for most people, if anyone simply won’t leave them alone but keeps texting or calling or messaging or writing or following them around and trying to carry on a conversation, that may be trying, even if they don’t say so out loud.
You’re far less likely to put your foot in your mouth. Could I stand to have done this a good bit less in my life!
You may sometimes find it easier to live in peace with others. It’s rare to come across a very large group of people with whom you agree on every issue and who all agree with each other, and some people deal better with disagreement than do others. If you are able to hold a view (or reject a view) and yet not express it, you have the advantage over someone who proclaims to all acquaintances what it is that he thinks.
I’ve been going through The Adventures of Sally (Wodehouse, once again). Bits describing lone thought-wrestling, in the car at night, while looking out at the passing scenery, appeal to me. Also some of her letters. “Proud! That’s the real trouble, Ginger. My pride has been battered and chopped up and broken into as many pieces as you broke Mr. Scrymgeour’s stick!”
Cons
You may unwittingly offend people. It’s not always certainly clear when someone expects you to communicate, either to respond or to initiate a conversation, or to bring up something. Again, some may not even say it aloud (at least not to you), but they may be bothered all the same. It’s hard for me to imagine, though, that this would happen as often as people would be bothered by one’s speaking too much.
You may be a bit lonely. What if you already are, though? Conversation is such a warming and helpful sort of a thing, when it involves sharing what one has in common with others. As I said before, for me it’s one of the chief pastimes that involves friends. You don’t have to speak every interesting thought you have. (For me that’s a tricky thing to remember.) But when an idea occurs to me and I’m excited to share it with others and it just doesn’t seem to excite them the same—well, after the 434th time or so of that, it does become easier to consider shutting up. It’s not their fault in any way. I still can become lonely, though.
An adult’s lament
If you were to drop off the face of the earth tomorrow, the people who call looking for you, those are your real friends.
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
— Henry Brook Adams
At long last I think I may give up on Twitter—that is, X—entirely. Earlier this year, I deleted my original account, opened in 2009: I had 30 days to log back in and the 30 days came and went, so it’s gone. I have another account, with fewer than 50 followers, but still with some nice interactions. But in addition to wasting time with that account, I’m getting worn out.
I’m worn out in multiple aspects of social life. It’s too long a story to tell, but by my late 20s and now in my early 30s, I have few close personal friends. Those I did know well—better than I knew any others, at least—I seem to be losing touch with, through geographic distance or relational coolness or loss of common interests or doctrinal difference or something else; I could not say.
But I’ve plodded along trying to be friends: online, in person, via text or X or real-life visiting. Some of my efforts seem to wear me out. I know that friendship is a two-way thing, but that’s just it, it’s a two-way thing! How long should I really continue to sink time into:
Does this person like to be with me?
Why does that person rarely text me?
Does the other person not know I’m an X follower, or is it an intentional declining to follow me back?
What will that person think if I start doing this?
Will this person like me less if it gets out that I believe that?
Is it worth inviting the other person over again, or am I the only one in this relationship who really wants to be friends?
I don’t mean to attack. I don’t want to belittle the kindness of the ones who do befriend me. I don’t consider myself a good human being or very interesting and I don’t know for sure that I’d want to be friends with me, if I weren’t me. And I’m sure my failings are too many to be numbered in a stupid but sad blog post.
I guess isolation comes in multiple forms: one can be isolated in a place, far from others who would otherwise have much in common; one can be isolated theologically and know almost no one who shares certain beliefs. One may even simply be not a major contributor to parties or gatherings and thus be sometimes left alone when those occur, and that may be a form of isolation.
I think I’ll try to go ahead and accept that. I have a wonderful church family who I must get to know better, I have a wife who when I think that God brought her to me it makes me cry, and I have dear children who I must be a friend to, and who will need to face this issue some day themselves. Friendship is important, and community is necessary, but not everybody is promised a life on earth flooded with the joyous and strengthening companionship of fellow passengers to the grave. What I’m promised is by the Lord Jesus, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5 KJV). Please, God, help me to hold on to that.
Have I mentioned (I have) that I spend a deal of time thinking about friendship? I do. I cannot say that I have worlds of experience in the matter; in this respect I may be somewhat like Mike Jackson, who “did not make friends very quickly or easily, though he had always had scores of acquaintances”.
In any case, I do think about the concept—what friendship entails, what leads to it, why I don’t have more experience of it—fairly often. I haven’t yet arrived at any Grand Unified Theory or anything. I still ponder, off and on, what components are necessary. What patterns are there? (I think of David and Jonathan, Bruchko and Bobby, the other examples from history or literature that I presumably could cite if I were more widely read, and so forth.)
And as I say, I don’t have it all figured out. But I consider that I do have one single aspect nailed down for sure. There must be other requirements and I must track them down, but I know that a deep friendship requires for sure:
A friend who speaks just the same about you when you’re present as when you’re not.
It’s those people that make me both happy and sad in equal measures. I want them to be in my top cake layer, but I don’t interact with them often enough for me to feel comfortable leaning on them. They don’t know me well enough (very likely my fault) to lean on me when things get difficult. I WOULD totally be there if/when they need me, and I’m pretty sure they would be there for me — but again, I’m so bad at letting my guard down, that most people I consider friends don’t fully know me, and in turn, I don’t fully know them.
Blog Of My Sojourn 