Finding friends

It's kinda meta

None of my closest friends are people I would have sought out. If someone had given me access to a database of possible friends, I would have set up some sort of filters to help sift through the list and I would have put in a bunch of parameters around things I like: “must like to talk about philosophy”, “must be interested in photography”, “must like to cook”, “must read poetry”, “must drink good beer”, “must own at least two kayaks, preferably three or more”, etc. Had I run such a screen, none of my actual closest friends would have made it through. 

My wife and I were married a few weeks after we graduated from college, and a week after that I went onto active duty. Together we traveled around the country for the next couple of decades, moving every other year or so. Some of our tours were quite lonely because we never really connected with anyone. But during most of our tours we were wonderfully lucky and found people we could get along with, and sometimes even form life-long bonds. 

One of our assignments was to Hawaii where we stayed for three years. When we left, wouldn’t you know it, but the assignment officer only had three choices for me - rural Alaska, rural Oklahoma, or rural Louisiana. We desperately wanted to get back to the East coast, but somehow all of those assignments had already been promised to other people. (Was there maybe a little “you had yours, now you must embrace the suck” operating in the background? That’s the Army.) Louisiana worked out to be the best job opportunity, so that was where we went. Leesville, Louisiana. Ask someone about Leesville who is in the Army and is not originally from Louisiana, and they will say one of two coded responses, “It’s a great place if you like to hunt and fish”, which means, “It’s in the middle of nowhere”, or “It’s a great place for families”, which means, “There isn’t anything to do, so you will spend a lot of time looking at your spouse and kids”. It’s been almost 20 years since we left Leesville, so I don’t know if a lot has changed, but the big thing to do on a Saturday was to go shopping at the Super Walmart, and then get dinner at Catfish Junction, a restaurant with corrugated tin walls and where you were served peanuts and encouraged to throw the shells on the concrete floor. 

And yet… our tour in Louisiana was one of the best times in our lives. I had a great team working for me. Because I ran the finance operation for the Army Hospital, I had all civilians, and the post represented the best jobs in the area. So I had the cream of Leesville working for me. Our kids were all elementary school age, and so we chose to live on post where we knew we would be amongst other Army families. On our street there were about 20 houses and there were about 50 kids. On any given Friday or Saturday evening in the summer, the adults would gather in someone’s front yard - we all bought bench swings and metal firepits - and as the sun went down, we would all emerge from our little cinderblock houses and find who was having the fire that night. Pretty soon the adults would be gathered around someone’s swing while the kids ran up and down the street, even after the street lights had come on. It was like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting that would have been titled “American Neighborhood” or something like that. We found wonderful friends, some of whom we are still close with after all these years. 

The British writer and Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor” (Heretics, 1905, ch. 14). I would argue that this is only partially correct - it is from the set of neighbors that we make our friends and our enemies. If you do not know a person, s/he cannot truly be your friend or enemy. The world is fantastically large, and the number of people that occupy it at any given time boggles the mind. We will only encounter a tiny fraction of the world’s population in our lifetime, and how that fraction is determined will be random, or, if you will, determined by God. Of course God’s will (if you believe in such a thing) is unknowable to the human mind, so either way, to us, it’s either actually random, or appears to be random. From a lived experience perspective, it’s the same thing. God chooses the set we get to pick from, and from that set, we make our friends and our enemies. 

I suppose somewhere out there in that vast white space is a guy who would match on all my interests and we would have an endless amount of fun grokking on our latest discoveries about our common interests, and we would be inseparable friends, constantly having something to talk about. Unfortunately, from my experience, that isn’t how actual friendships develop, nor how they are sustained.  

First, a real friendship requires meeting someone. A potential friend has to appear in that tiny black dot of people you meet. Next, you must exert good will toward each other. Friendship has a quality of mutuality. You can wish someone well who does not respond in kind. While that is admirable, that is not a friendship. Mutual good will is necessary but not sufficient to friendship. Once mutual good will is in place, you must both find some joy in the other’s presence. This is where having common interests is useful. We enjoy talking about the things we are interested in, and there is a reflexive joy in sharing an interest with someone else. Your hearts move in synchrony as you share in your passion. This is why having a love for sports teams works as a glue for so many male friendships. You can pass the relatively low bar of willing someone well, and then quickly share a common interest - your local sports team. 

Had I waited to find people who shared my interests to find friends while I was in the Army, or even now, I would likely have found very few. I’m an odd guy with odd interests. I don’t follow any professional sports teams. My wife has to explain most professional sports to me on the rare occasion that I watch them. Like Ted Lasso, I still don’t get “offsides” in soccer, and probably never will. It’s not that I have an objection to watching team sports, it’s that I am unwilling, at this late date, to make the investment to learn them. 

So what do I look for when making a friend? I tend to the meta. While it is great if we have something in common, I am perfectly ok with listening to you talk at some length about your interest, even if it is not my interest, so long as you exude passion. I am drawn to passion like a moth to a bright light bulb (not a flame - I don’t want to burn up in a smelly puff of smoke). I am drawn to people who are driven. I love to be in the presence of people who are pursuing goals, and want to talk about their goals and challenges. People who are pursuing something with passion can inspire you to pursue your own passion. Again, this requires some mutuality. I want you to listen to my passion and my goals and enter into my excitement as well. It is the mutuality - the ability and desire to see and enter into the other’s passion - the provides the commonality, even if we wouldn’t pursue the other’s goals ourselves.

I have many wonderful friends. They just aren’t who I would have looked for. When I think about it, I sometimes laugh that we have found joy in each other’s presence. I actually wrote this poem about how strange it is. God, fate, or chance puts some people into our lives and leaves out the rest. We pick from what is presented, not what we would choose. What worked to form friendships were underlying values - things deeper than ephemeral interests. And maybe some things that aren’t especially deep. If I were to program a computer to pick friends from a database now, I would write parameters such as: “Must be conscientious”, “Must be driven”,  “Must value freedom, independence, and self-reliance”, “Must be willing to overlook small offenses”, “Must be able to tolerate me and give me the benefit of the doubt”, “Must have a good heart”, “Must will good for me.”