To Seek the High Call of Friendship

My wife was in a sorority during our college years. They were a local group, unique to our school. Their motto was: “To Seek the High Call of Friendship.” They were a great group of women, and we remain friends with many of her sisters to this day.

I always thought that was a magnificent sentiment: Seeking the High Call of Friendship. To me, friendship has always been a High Call, and one that in its own way has defined the kind of person I want to be. I imagine that one’s ability to be a good friend is a statement on the kind of things that hold true value.

So, what is a friend? Are friends friends forever? I think everyone has had friends that were friends of convenience-people who were there at the right time, and then never there again. I do not mention that in a negative manner in any way, as I suppose there are levels of friendship.

There are people in your life that you’d hop on a plane for, and some that, in all honesty, for whom you probably wouldn’t.

A few weeks ago, I was driving with a couple that we have become friends with here on Oahu, and they made a comment that “guys don’t make friends after college.” I thought about that one a lot. Outside of my wife, the best friends in my life are my pals from college, and a few from high school. There was a truth in that that gave me pause in a way that I did not expect. High School and College were not particularly pleasant years all the time. High School in particular, especially my last year and a half there, dealing with my Father’s Cancer and death, were dramatically hard in a way that touched my relationships for ten years after the fact. I’m not proud of that. I drove a lot of good people away from me because I was broken in a way that I would not understand for several years, and only after finding the best friend I’ll ever have.

But, as we get older, and life makes all mellower and more apt to connect with the shared experiences of our youth, what does it mean to be friends? In the era of Facebook, where all the social divisions that separated us during school seem to be absent, what does it mean to be a friend?

I had a buddy from High School visit the island this week, and though I’ve not seen him in several years, I was cranked to reconnect with him and hang out. We walked all over Waikiki and Honolulu, and dropped way too much cash at the best Sushi restaurant on the planet, “Sushi Sasabune,” on King Street in Honolulu. Seriously. It is amazing, but I digress.

It’s awesome sushi though. I had a blue Shrimp.

It was great to get together, and we talked about a lot of things, our lives, our families, our friends, friendship in general. He told me about the projects that he’s been working on and some recent personal challenges, and I talked about this blog, which he’s read, and the novel, and the music I used to do and stuff like that. We fell into a familiar banter quite easily. It had been a real long time, and I was impressed with how easy it was to just hang out and be friends.

In the end, I wonder if, at this point in my adult life, friendship is really just an agreement to give a damn about one another. At the end of the day, by the time we reach this age, there’s probably not a lot of people in our lives that are not there without our knowledge or consent.

I’ve not lived in my hometown since 1996. But I still care about what happens there. I choose to. I’ve not seen some of my classmates since 1991, but I still grieved the fact that one of them lost his brother in the Iraq war. I remember watching the entire program that Dan Rather produced where he read the name of every casualty of the War up to that point, until they read his name.
I sat there, for 41 minutes until they said his name. I hadn’t thought of that until my friend visited yesterday.

I’ve had a lot of good friends in my life, and some who turned out to be disappointing. I imagine that is pretty much the case for everyone reading this: We’ve all had people show up just when we needed them, just like we’ve probably had someone really let them down by not showing up at all. We’ve all probably made that decision to tell a friend something they didn’t want to hear, but it was the right thing to do. We’ve all probably been friends with that person who was more important to us than we were to them, and if we’re honest, we’ve probably all been on the other side of that one. But in the end, whether it is 20 minutes, or 20 years since you’ve last connected with a friend, I think what the measure might be is, will you show up? Even after years, I think that shared experience of having been friends at one time just might lend itself to being friends again: just gotta decide to give a damn. Or to start giving a damn. Or, get Sushi.

So, with the explosion of Facebook, and the fact that huge numbers of past friends from both High School and College are there reconnecting, it would seem to me that the High Call of Friendship is certainly in the air. It’s been fun to hear from people and find out what they have been up to. It’s kind of cool to think about the fact that even from several thousands of miles away, I’ve been able to learn more about what people are up to then I have in years.

I hope it lasts. Being so far away has had its positives and its negatives in our life as a family. There are days that I feel very isolated way out here in the Pacific. Guess that’s one of the things that made my recent visitor so welcome and our visit so rewarding-just like that, we fell into a conversation that we could have started 10 years ago, and hadn’t missed a beat. Because we chose to. It was good stuff.

I wonder if that’s possible within one’s own family. Hope I find out someday, but that is perhaps a topic for another day.

For the now, I"ll make that choice every time to give a damn.