Authentic Friends

A couple old friends just replied by email to snail mail letters I wrote them recently. I hadn’t been in touch with either in ages.

How comforting to hear from those who have known you forever and have seen you weather many a storm and watched you pull through time and again! I shared with them how my life had taken some nasty turns recently. They were like “Wow, Man! We’re right here for you!” Nothing had changed.

Amazing how certain friendships can be so ready to pick up again after so long. A therapist friend says all relationships go through rupture – for a host of reasons. The question is whether we are willing to do the work of repairing them. In some cases, it is better just to leave the past in the past and pick up at the present. In others, it is necessary to go back and work through the rupture. With these particular friends, distance caused the separation, and a quick exchange of letters sharing the gist of recent happenings sufficed.

Old relationships lacking currency and immediacy cannot substitute for “here and now” friends. What these oldies do have is the ability to validate us in ways immediate friendships cannot. The old ones see a much broader picture of who we are. They understand that the sum of us is not merely what they are seeing of us today. They know we are more than a single or a handful of episodes. Whatever today offers, no matter how awful, it is not the final verdict of who we are as a person.

For me, one “old” friend, my wife, has the maximum view available to humans – she knows both the broad and the immediate. As far as human friends go, there is no competition.

But there is One who has a far more complete perspective on each of us, a truth easy to forget when immediate friends rush to judgment or old friendships fade. Besides the broad and immediate views, God has the insider advantage – seeing me like no one else, not even I myself, can. Plus, God alone sees me from the future. Broad, immediate, insider, future -- all make for a vastly enhanced perspective. Like 4D vision.

Hillary Clinton famously quoted the old proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” It also takes a village to live a life. I firmly agree that “no man is poor who has friends,” a saying made famous by the movie “It’s a Wonderful life”. I’ve long relished the idea that I was wealthy from this angle if no other. Lately I’ve realized that some of these assets have been tied up. I am heartened to regain access to them and discover that they are still quite valuable, at least as broad friends, if not immediate or current.

God speaks, among other means, through people and when we access these old friends we are likely to hear God that much more fully. The voices of multiple friends are not redundant. Lacking God’s megaview, they each provide a unique perspective. Even when they say the same thing, they confirm what others see. The “two-or-three witnesses” validation is crucial to countering lying or misinformed voices, regardless how voluminous.

No wonder God said man (male or female) was not meant to live alone. God made us social, made us to live in community. We are, if anything, relational creatures. In God’s likeness.

Really

So I’m on this journey. Like one of those things you buy into not knowing all that is involved, only to discover too late that it’s far more than you bargained for. Years ago, I had a small clip-out hanging on my wall: “I've always admired the person who could bite off more than they could chew – and then chew it.” How many times have I found myself in that spot! Sometimes it is best not to know the future or you’d never get out of bed.

I’m on this journey. I’m not sure I’ve made many big decisions to get me here, but I sure have made a lot of little ones fully unaware of unintended consequences far down the road.

One big decision I made a long time ago – or was it a matter of little choices becoming a habit? – was to live life as authentically as I could. I’m not sure I’ve always followed that ideal. After all, I like to be liked by the next person as much as the next person.

Well now, events have conspired so that most all the safety nets have been pulled away. When that happens, you don’t have to worry about risk – you risk no matter what you do, which in a way means whatever action you take is in some sense therefore risk-free. How can you really be risking if there is nothing left to lose?

OK, I still have a few things to lose, five to be exact. My wife and my kids. Oh, and life itself – mine. Still, relatively speaking, already being in free-fall, it is much easier to live the authentic life, if that is your goal, and I realize it really is.

I’m on this journey. And I want it to be as authentic as possible. Why? I don’t know. Because authenticity, for whatever reason, seems to give life meaning?

Then what does it mean to be authentic? (Quick look at the dictionary) Genuine. Real. Sounds fine. Real what?

My wife used to have this clipping (we have clipped a lot in our lives) of this mass of penguins, all look-alikes to the human eye. One of them stands up above all the rest and says “I gotta be me!” Which of all those penguins is the authentic one? One who looks and acts like penguins do? Or the one who stands out and says, “I gotta be me”?

I don’t know about penguins, but I have a feeling that as far as humans are concerned, the human who asks questions like, “Who am I really?” and “What makes me genuine?” is the authentic human. Case in point, Rene Descartes’ famous statement, “I think therefore I am.” I threw that in to sound refined (how’s that for authentic?) and, more importantly, to take off on what Descartes was saying.

Humans think, or at least that is what they are supposed to do. When they really do think, they are more likely to be authentically human than when they don’t. Most times most people don’t think – at least not much. They just plow straight ahead. But when life gets wacky and there is no more “straight ahead” to plow, it makes one start to really think. And that person, just maybe, starts to be human. So the authentic journey I’m on is a human, thinking one. At least that’s the goal, I think.