Be A Friend

To follow up on this post, I've recently spoken to many guys that are looking for a close friend. We're looking for another guy in whom we can confide and discuss the tough questions in life. As some of the responses to that post mentioned, many young girls are in a similar position and are looking for another girl to walk alongside them.

Sure, it may be possible to get by without such a friend. We can make do with a larger circle of friends with whom we are not quite so intimate. We can get through the trials in life on our own, though sometimes we're a little worse for the wear. We rely on our close family relationships. We chalk up the lack of a close friend to circumstance. We rationalize, criticize and just do our best. It's just that many of us want so much more.

I have been reading a book called "Vital Friends" by Tom Rath (link). One survey result that it mentions is that employees with a close friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged at work. That means that, even within our careers, we work best when we have a friend that we can lean on and that we can support.

The book mentions a couple of more personal stories as well. It mentions one guy whose "work friend" left and he was gradually overcome with the regular stress of his job. He gradually turned to alcohol to cope and he eventually bottomed out without a job, friend or family. On the other end of the spectrum was a young girl that left a bad home life while in her teens. She eventually got training, got a job and started a family in large part due to the encouragement of one loving social worker. In either case, both of these people point to that one close friendship as a turning point in their lives.

Despite the fact that I see (and experience) this evident need in so many people, I was still left with that one question: Why? Why do we let ourselves go on without something that we know that we need and want? How can we get past that and find that meaningful friendship?

Maybe it's a symptom of our North American culture or our church culture. Maybe it has something to do with the generational gap or how our families are. Maybe we have tried and failed, or maybe we haven't learned how to do it. Maybe we don't want to rely on someone, or have someone teach us, or have someone really challenge us. Maybe we think that friendships "just happen," in the same way that we may find our soul mate before marriage.

Funny enough, I think that I found my answer while writing this little children's poem this past week. I say that good friendships are not intangible ghosts that are lost in a crowd of faces. I say that best friends are not merely born by luck. The closest and best kinds of friendships are made, by conscious choice and with our patience and love.

We gain a friend when we are a friend.
There may be a million other reasons that contribute to a lack of really close friends. Hey, maybe you lived in Antartica and your only friend was a penguin. As valid as those reasons may be, there's really only one reason that stops us from developing friendships and that's us. In my case, that's me. If we do not reach out in friendship to someone else, it's very hard for anyone else to reach out to us.