Crossroads
posted by robert - October 31st, 2005 at 4:12 PMI find when I reflect on my life, my point of view is ordered into stretches of “normal life” punctuated by notable events — some happy, some sad, some traumatic, but all notable because of the lasting impact they had on me. I suspect this is how most people with a poor memory reflect on their past. I find myself realizing that these past two months will no doubt become an Event (with the captial “E” well earned) in my personal timeline. And before you ask: I’m writing about it here for all the world to see in a last-gasp effort to bring these things to a resolution, at least for me personally.
Making friends is an interesting sociology experiment: you don’t really plan to do it and you don’t really think about it while it’s happening — it just happens. I think that’s part of what makes it special, even magical. As humans, we’re designed to yearn for relationships, to need them, so to make a friend is a remarkable thing — one of the more fulfilling and completing things I believe we’ll get to experience this side of Heaven. And to find a true friend — someone you can talk to about everything, someone that can share the same with you — is truly a blessing. That sense of companionship, that bond, helps make us feel fuller, richer; I believe we’re created with this yearning for relationship as one of many vanes to point us towards God — one more way of underscoring that our ultimate reason for existing is for relationship with Him.
I realize far better than I’d like to realize just how flawed and fallible an individual I am — and that knowledge makes my friends all the more precious to me. They are in many ways my earthly muses, with each according to their strengths and gifts inspiring me to do things better and to be a better person. I’m by nature a more reserved individual when it comes to being social; having been burned in the past, I tend to play my “heart hand” close to the vest. It’s a weak and selfish strategy, and I struggle with it — and while I feel I’ve grown much over the past 10 years with regards to being more personable, I certainly have a long ways to go. I say all that to underscore this point: the few friends that I have are very precious to me indeed.
Now for the other side of the coin: I believe in tough love. It’s a natural tendency that has only been refined as I’ve gotten older and more studious of both history and current events; I think much that is wrong with “today” can be boiled down to a fatally toxic blend of relativism and the entitlement mentality. In my mind, the only medicine for both of these illnesses is an unrelenting dose of daylight: confrontation with Truth and acceptance of selfishness. Truth is something that I have become re-acquainted with over the past 10 years and continue to learn about daily; selfishness is a moment-by-moment battle, as it is with all of us. Neither produces lessons that are easy to take or painless — but such is as it should be. This outlook on life has continually been reinforced for me — in psychological terms, it’s “experientially validated” via what I’ve been through in life. I don’t have an equation for it, but I know it’s true: as I apply it, I see that it works. Over and over and over.
Combine the two concepts. My passion for my friends, my agape love for them, is all too often the fuel for my tough love fire. I can’t stand being the recipient of honest, direct, scathing criticism — but nearly every single time I’ve gotten it (and every single time it’s been deserved), it was exactly what I needed to hear. Voila, experiential validation: it was the only thing that worked for me, so when all the other cards have been played — or the stakes are high enough — it’s the bat that I’m going to swing. Needless to say, this isn’t real bright on my part: everybody doesn’t respond the same way to the same sort of criticism that works for me, even if they believe my heart to be in the right place. So my best-intentioned dose of tough love can end up coming across as anything but “love”. The irony, of course, is that that’s exactly what it is — and this is usually eventually understood, as I realize that I’ve used an aluminum bat instead of a wiffle ball bat and the recipient has time to lick their wounds and consider the content of what I was attempting to convey rather than the packaging.
So what am I babbling about all of this for?
I’ve lost a friend. I don’t know exactly why; I don’t even know exactly how. I know some of the circumstances that led up to the parting of ways, even though I don’t fully know how they contributed. I know there’s a girl involved — a girl with whom I have a past — but again, I don’t really know how that’s contributed to where things are now. All I have are theories and guesses. My last phone calls were ignored; my last message wasn’t returned — in which I made it clear that if he wanted me to quit trying to contact him to just not return the call. Through the grapevine I’ve heard confirmation that he is aware of the state of things, and is apparently grimly satisfied with the way things are. The last “conversation” we had was a virtual one; I’ve re-read that transcript many times, regretting my delivery of some things, but still convinced that my position wasn’t wrong: that the path he had decided to take put our relationship into limbo, and that all of us involved should sit down and “air out the laundry”, so to speak. Clear the air. I didn’t promise that the birds would be singing and the sun shining after such a hypothetical meeting, but at least there would be some resolution, one way or another. One of several things past relationships (friendly or romantic) have taught me is that closure is important; don’t magnify an already-regrettable parting of ways by leaving ambiguities hanging over everyone’s heads. Needless to say, he declined. I felt pretty strongly about talking then; I felt even more strongly about it some weeks later after they announced their engagement. I have heard first-hand what it’s like to be engaged to someone whom all of your close friends and family had reservations about — and then, post-separation, to reflect on the fact that not a single friend or family member pulled you aside and forced you to go through the unpleasant but necessary steps of examining the reality of what you were about to do. I feel a pretty strong sense of duty, no matter how unpleasant it has become. I think it is the duty of a close friend to do exactly that sort of hard work if and when the situation calls for it, even if it means risking the friendship itself: a true friendship is about love, after all, and real love means doing what’s best for that person — not yourself. The irony, as I reflect on this, is that while I am very much concerned about what I feel he’s getting into, I’m not actually qualified to make such a call: I haven’t known her for years, and I obviously don’t know him nearly as well as I thought I did.
Deservedly or selfishly, I feel wronged, cheated, confused. I regret that my last words were so caustic and that the genuine concern motivating them so completely missed. At this point I’m in a recovery mode: coming to grips with the fact that this route is apparently not an accidental one. Apparently he wants it this way, to end this friendship — perhaps because he was faced with a decision between “the girl” or “the close friend of 9+ years”. Of course I’m speculating — but then I can’t do much else, as I have no better information to do otherwise with. I refuse to get third-party gossip from mutual friends and acquaintances; this isn’t middle school. The truly sad part is that the damage has been done; I’m sorry for my bumbling and awful handling of things, and I would forgive any ill will on his part. But I am human: movie plot devices aside, “forgive and forget” doesn’t exist in this life; we may forgive, but we can’t ever really forget. Trust is something that takes a long, long time to be earned and only a moment to lose — should there ever be a friendship (or even contact) ever again, I doubt it could ever be the same.
So that’s it. I guess I wanted to vent, to put this “out there”. There’s something therapeutic about doing so, and it will at least make it a publicly discussable topic for our few mutual friends; no more sidling around the elephant in the room. And I suppose this is the best I can do for closure for myself. I haven’t had the time or “distance” from all of this to really internalize any lessons yet. I firmly believe that all things happen for a reason, and that that reason is part of God’s work on His universe-sized canvas — and I also believe that we are only sometimes allowed to understand those reasons. In all things in life, good and bad, I take this perspective — and as I apply it now, at this personal crossroads, tomorrow seems brighter than ever. What a perfect example of “the peace that passeth all understanding.”