This was shared with me by someone very dear to my heart. I have never met him but I feel no less connected to him. I wanted to share this with you guys and see what you think.

JUNE 12, 2009

Ya Gotta Have (Real) Friends

By TONY WOODLIEF

My 4-year-old son, Isaac, is in his bedroom, putting on a shirt. He talks to himself as he harasses the buttons into their holes. "Everybody loves me," he says. "I love me. I don't know who doesn't love me. Nobody doesn't love me." My little aspiring pop star/cult leader comes to his logical conclusion: "All love me."

Being loved by everyone sounds wonderful, and perhaps it's possible when one's universe of friends is as small as Isaac's. I once heard him run down the list, naming his brothers, his parents, his friends. This seemed to give him a particular form of pleasure, to say a name and announce that he is loved by that person. What Isaac hasn't learned is that there are gradations of friends, and different kinds of love, and cycles to life. I don't know many adults who can, like Isaac, list without hesitation or doubt the people who genuinely love them.

It's a tempting exercise in narcissism nonetheless, and suitable for our day. Now may be a better time than ever to think about friendship, because we can maintain some semblance of it with more people than ever before. Isaac is far more likeable than I, yet on paper I dominate -- he can go through his entire friend list before his Cheerios get soggy, while I have 298 friends on Facebook alone. But while Isaac can say with confidence that everyone in his little circle loves him, I'm not sure if everyone in my huge circle even likes me. What's worse, I don't know if I care. Two-hundred ninety-eight genuine friendships sounds exhausting.

Friendship seems to be the key, however, to a longer, happier life. Recently The Atlantic published a fascinating story by Joshua Wolf Shenk about Harvard's Grant Study, which in 1937 began following 268 undergraduates through the intimate details of their lives. Some of the men drank themselves to death and others became prosperous and powerful. Some had loving marriages, others made multiple women unhappy. While no formula seems to emerge from these accounts, the study's longtime head, George Vaillant, claims love is the most essential ingredient. David Brooks at the New York Times gives it a more clinical-sounding summation: "Relationships are the key to happiness."

Of course it's not the quantity of relationships that matters, or else Isaac and I would find our outlooks reversed. There's the quality of friendship to be considered, something social network sites neglect. In fact, maybe a high number of relationships indicates shallow friendships. Think about it: We acquire friends through our experiences -- where we live, go to school and work. We have more opportunities to make friends the broader these experiences. But the more far-flung our adventures, the less time we have to grow roots in one place and develop intimate bonds.

That's an appealing theory, but we all know of people who defy it. In "The Girls From Ames," for example, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow offers a heart-lifting account of 11 women who became friends as children in Ames, Iowa, and have remained close even as their lives carry them through marriages, divorces, business success, unemployment, childrearing, illnesses and the deaths of loved ones -- all of it spread across multiple cities. Mr. Zaslow's exploration of research into friendship indicates that women are more likely than men to sustain such intimacy. "Women talk," writes Mr. Zaslow. "Men do things together." With modern communication devices women can do more talking than ever, no matter where they live or how busy their lives become. When male friends move away or start a family, however, the opportunities for doing things together -- the dominant expression of their friendship -- diminish.

Given the research indicating how important friendships are to health (Mr. Zaslow cites one study where women with the most friends lived 22% longer than those with the fewest number), perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that women tend to outlast men. And if Digby Anderson, author of "Losing Friends," is to be believed, we'll need medical improvements to carry a greater burden, because friendship and its social benefits are on the wane, done in partly by a left-wing emphasis on egalitarianism over loyalty, and a right-wing elevation of the nuclear family. Valuable same-sex friendship institutions (Elks clubs and the like) and norms have deteriorated, he argues, especially among men. While men are hard-wired to live out friendship through shared activities, legal and social pressures render them less able to do so.

We needn't rely on the research; we can surmise that friendship is essential to life by the myriad ways we tailor the word friend to our individual wants: work friend, church friend, drinking friend, workout friend, friend with benefits. We are less than we were meant to be, it seems, without friends. Wendell Berry captures this idea: "By ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity." In "Friendship: An Exposé," Joseph Epstein is more blunt: "Friends can be an immense complication, a huge burden, a royal pain in the arse. . . ." Yet, he writes, "without friendship, make no mistake about it, we are all lost."

We assemble relationships because we need them, but many of us -- particularly men -- shrink from intimacy, generating the modern dilemma of dense social networks afflicted with loneliness. Allan Bloom indicates this in "Love and Friendship": "Isolation, a sense of lack of profound contact with other human beings, seems to be the disease of our time." He decried the word "relationship" as "pallid" and "pseudoscientific," itself an obstacle to genuine intimacy.

My 298 Facebook friends aren't the ones who remember our dead daughter's birthday or leave flowers at her grave. Nor among them is the pastor who baptized each of our children and waged a personal holy war to keep our marriage from crumbling years ago. We have these deeper friendships because we've tried to build a life in one place. They sprang up because the stuff of life happened to this cluster of us living near one another, and much of it was too joyous or heartbreaking not to share with someone. If friendship is the key to happiness, then maybe this is the key to friendship, to be enmeshed -- not just tangentially or voyeuristically, but physically -- in the lives of others. That can be hard to swallow in a culture that prizes individualism, mobility and privacy.

And perhaps that is why Isaac is so confident in his affections, because the boy isn't self-absorbed enough yet to value individualism as an end. His idea of mobility is to ride his bike without training wheels, and he hasn't -- trust me on this -- the first inkling of what privacy means. He doesn't have a great many friends, this child. But he loves everyone he knows, and I'm pretty sure they love him. Would that we were all so lucky.

Mr. Woodlief's memoir, "Somewhere More Holy," will be published by Zondervan in 2010.

so true
when they were babies I would soothe my guys to sleep by listing everyone who love them if you included pets it was a long enough list to get them to stop crying and start listening.

ZombieKitten said:

That is so sweet.

I have very few friends...most people I know are "friendly acquaintances". But the ones I do consider (real) friends I do know they love me ...and yeah, it does feel good to know it's a sincere, real love.

I won't go singing about it like Issac did, though

Byron said:

why not?

not including pets, 15 people love me whoa, that's a LOT

ZombieKitten said:

Because I prefer humming to singing

Byron said:

yeah you're right, it sounds weird when you say things with your mouth shut

ZombieKitten said:

Not including pets, I have 12 people who love me

Byron said:

woohoo!!!

Ivy, I feel as a friend I can tell you that my ass aint readin all that.

johnart said:

Friends I have less than five but they're all amessing and stuff

johnart said:

I love you anyway, John.

ZombieKitten said:

You've never heard me say something with my mouth shut lol

Alej said:

I used to want the world to be my friend and love me. I am learning to appreciate the close friends I have. I'd kill to have someone love me unconditionally tho'.

I can agree with all that. I'm much closer to my friends than my family but I know I'm loved by both groups. Most of my closest friends I've known for 15 years or more, without having any kind of falling out or serious arguments during all those years. But, I'm still able to connect with new people and add to the list. Matter of fact, some of my recent BFFs I actually met on the Org or Prince shows a few years ago and I talk to them all the time, they've come to my home and I've gone to theirs, and we've even traveled together. These new friends are special mofos and I know they'd do anything for me and vice versa. Fuck it, I'm a friend magnet.

Vendetta1 said:

Eh, I have to deal with people not liking me pretty much everyday, so I don't really give a shit about THEM, but I love to death those who I care about

Vendetta1 said:

You mean besides your kids and any possible pets lol

Vendetta1 said:

And I you.

Alej said:

Yeah, I don't give two pumps and a stroke about people I don't know or like not liking me.

Vendetta1 said:

Byron said:

Ohmygod, Byron.

I was on the elevator with two dogs today. I was thinking how much I love dogs because they love you unconditionally. My kids don't love me. Well, at least two of them don't.

And yes, I do mean besides kids and pets.

Vendetta1 said:

if I don't include kids, pets, nephews and my niece and my parents, I'm left with 4

SCNDLS said:

I don't know where I'd be if it weren't for Org people. I just looked at my phone book and at least 75% of those people are folks I met here. Some of these guys have been closer to me than people right here in my city/state.

ZombieKitten said:

Vendetta1 said:

One thing I've found to be true is 99.5% of all kids love their parents...even if they hate them

Vendetta1 said:

I hear ya. I ain't cool with that many but the ones I've gotten close to I'm totally in love with. In my case, I actually met most in person FIRST then found out they were Orgers that posted regularly. I'll be staying in LA next week with one that I met on here and that girl's my heart. From our first conversation it was like we'd known each other all our lives. She's like family to me.

I don't know if relatives are included but my best best friends are my sisters and mother. We literally talk almost everyday. we get mad at each other but then a coupla hours later we're over it. I love my sisters and mother I have high school and grammar school and we are all just like sisters. These are people who I know got my back. We can laugh and be goofy for hours just sitting. No competition, jealousy or disrespect. zero drama. It feels good.

heybaby said:

...My brother and sister and I were talking a few years back about how we are among each other's best friends...we take trips together, go out to eat and to movies together, stay up late talking and drinking (well, they drink moreso than me lol)...having that closeness with your siblings is excellent.