“Dayman. Champion of the sun. Ahh-ahh-ahh. You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone! Dayman.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Earth is covered over 80% by water, and most of it is not carbonated. The Earth is flat.
On a recent version of his podcast, Scott Adams said (I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to look it up), “I’m giving it one year. Not two. I’m not going to live another year like this.”
Wow. I did hear that (in a later podcast) he reported that he changed his blood pressure medication and his mood improved, but am likewise too lazy to verify that, either.
To be fair, Scott has had a pretty bad year. He’s had health issues, relationship issues. How bad were they? At one point in his podcast this spring, he melted down and tore into a viewer in a greatly disproportionate way. It was like using a chainsaw to trim toenails. Sure, it’ll do the work, but it will leave quite a mess.
This was the big sign to me that Adams was under a lot of pressure.
After hearing me sing, the choir director told me I was a natural tenor. “Yes, John, stay ten or twelve feet away from a microphone.”
The point isn’t to diagnose Scott’s health or love life, but rather to point out that regardless of wealth (Adams is loaded) and options in life (he could live anywhere in the world he wants to, drive whatever car he wants to, and never worry about a bill ever again in his life), there is the possibility that someone you know needs a friend. Scott certainly does.
One of the things that we have seen decline over the past few decades are those institutions in society that were devoted to fraternity – the Elks, Masons, Moose Lodge, bowling leagues, Boy Scouts® etc., have all seen membership declines – some so much that they’ve folded up in many locations.
And in our club we eat the same thing for breakfast: Synonym Toast Crunch.
Over a decade ago, I was involved with Scouting™. We would have leader meetings, which I ran. I had an agenda, and we’d go through it in a rather business-like fashion. At the end of one of the meetings, another leader, Chuck, pulled out his new cell phone and was showing me its features.
After the meeting, as The Mrs. (she was a leader, too) and I got into the car, I said, “That was weird, Chuck showing me his phone after the meeting. Why do you think he did that?”
The Mrs. looked at me as one would look at a not-so-bright child, and said, slowly so my dim brain could comprehend . . . “Because . . . he’s your,” long pause, and then “friend.” She said friend slowly enough that it was about two seconds in length.
My friend asked if I could sleep with someone dead or alive, who would it be? I answered, “Obviously, someone alive.”
Of course, she was right. I had been so focused on the “business” side of running the Cub Scout stuff that I had forgotten entirely about the personal side. Chuck was my friend. Duh. But the lesson I learned was simple: friends really are out there. Chuck moved away, but I still call him once a year. And I do my best to stay in contact with friends that, in some cases, I haven’t seen physically in 15 years.
That network of friends is important, at least for me. While some people might go through life alone and do fine, I find that having a good network of friends helps me. I can get good advice. I can complain. I can share my journey. I can get good ideas. I can laugh. I can share my troubles.
I don’t go through life alone, and I’m stronger for it.
One of the joys of childhood was how easy it was to make friends. In many cases, we didn’t have anything in common but being the same age, but that was enough. Something about endless summers and going through similar difficulties was great for bonding.
I then started a camp to train kids needlework. It was sew in tents.
I think technology has had a big role in our current dislocation. Our televisions can now bring us nearly every movie from the last twenty years at a touch. YouTube™ has millions of videos on almost every topic. And don’t forget that friendship requires trust, something that is in shorter supply today than in years past. In the end, regardless of why, we can change that.
My request is this. Look around as you go about your day. Try to, as much as possible, spread joy to those that deserve it. And maybe even a little to some who don’t. A little. I know that most people who act like jerks are really jerks, but some are just going through a bad time.
Also? Find and make a new friend. This takes time and commitment. And trust. And there’s the fear of loss, too. But the wonderful thing about friendship is this: when it exists, it’s work that helps both people.
Hopefully Adams has found a friend. If not, I’d be glad to show him my phone.
Oh, in a belated comment on Wendsday’s “Problem-Reaction-Solution” column, I note that conspiracy theorist David Icke, the originator of the PRS paradigm…
https://www.bitchute.com/video/AxZlwbf1em8C/
…has just been banned from entering the EU from his native UK…
https://summit.news/2022/11/04/conspiracy-author-david-icke-banned-from-eu-labeled-a-terrorist/
…so he’s just gonna have to write another (whacko?) book…
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=david+icke+books
And as Johnathan Turley notes, what’s sauce for goose Icke may be sauce for gander Musk…
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/11/02/eu-moves-against-twitter-to-block-free-speech-protections-after-calls-from-clinton-and-other-democratic-leaders/comment-page-2/
Ahhhh, David Icke. The WWE of political people. Banned.
That should tell you everything.
This is a topic I have some first-hand knowledge about. My close and happy relationship with my wife is the only real social interaction I have, and I find myself being overly protective of her because of the importance I place on it. I am fortunate to have developed close bonds to my stepchildren over the decades but they have their own lives that I only fly through occasionally like a comet instead of orbit like a moon. My own kids live on the other side of the continent, my daughter estranged due to the brainwashing of my ex and my fine son only an occasional voice on the phone that struggles with me to find a topic of common conversation. All my grandkids, both step and biological, are as distant as alien life forms. I retired almost three years ago (!?! – incredible how time flies) and I do not miss one iota either work or anybody there. The one co-worker I tried to stay in touch with at my grandkid’s football games where we used to meet up no longer comes because his own daughter graduated. A couple of check-in phone-call offers to let him as a fellow convertible enthusiast drive my upgrade 18 months ago to a (wonderful!) 2007 SLK 350 have gone unheeded. So instead of bowling alone, I putz around town with the wind in my hair alone – sadly, Nancy doesn’t like riding in convertibles.
Altho I spend a lot of time alone, I don’t feel lonely. And it seems I am not alone in feeling alone…
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/time-spent-with-relationships-by-age-us
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/who-americans-spend-their-time-with/
https://novum.substack.com/p/social-recession-by-the-numbers
Well, don’t forget that you can be a friend to someone else, too!
It’s hard to cultivate new friends without neglecting my very best friend, the one I’ve been married to for 30 years. There are only so many hours in the day, you know?
I do, that’s why conversation ebbs and flows with my friends. Good ones? You can pick up right where you left off.
“…concentration camp…”
Seriously, a great post. But, everytime “You’ve Got A Friend” comes on the car radio, we moan and change it. When James Taylor & Kerry went to Paree to sing it, I was hoping at least Kerry would get guillotined.
Ha! I’d prefer, “Your only friends are make believe.”
Oh, in a belated comment on Wendsday’s “Problem-Reaction-Solution” column, I note that conspiracy theorist David Icke, the originator of the PRS paradigm…
https://www.bitchute.com/video/AxZlwbf1em8C/
…has just been banned from entering the EU from his native UK…
https://summit.news/2022/11/04/conspiracy-author-david-icke-banned-from-eu-labeled-a-terrorist/
…so he’s just gonna have to write another (whacko?) book…
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=david+icke+books
And as Johnathan Turley notes, what’s sauce for goose Icke may be sauce for gander Musk…
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/11/02/eu-moves-against-twitter-to-block-free-speech-protections-after-calls-from-clinton-and-other-democratic-leaders/comment-page-2/
Oh, and he’s mentioned on the Weather Report.
You don’t even need a ton of friends, just a few friends you can really count on for things like burying a body without asking questions.
AS-
Agreed. Everyone used to laugh at Icke & the “shape-shifter” stuff. He’s spot on even down to the vaxx/chipped requirement here.
That is the best kind of friend.
When the beloved Mrs. entered my life to stay (we knew one another for 4 years before we finally paired up) I had a ragtag collection of friends, only one of whom she approved of. There were three in particular whom she disliked intensely. They were high school buddies of mine with whom I had gotten into a good deal of trouble through the years. The one friend of mine she tolerated was in a committed relationship, but the three desperadoes were all single. This mattered. A lot.
She made quick work of those bad boys, making them feel so uncomfortable in her presence that they stopped coming around our place. Eventually we lost touch and I have not heard from any of them in ages. This was by design, and the beloved Mrs. no longer even tries to deny it.
Curiously, though, she has managed to retain all of her surviving friends, some going back to early childhood. They still gather once or twice a year for “Sista’s weeks”, i.e. 7 days of lounging around in PJs at one lady’s house or another, guzzling boxed wine and watching the Hallmark channel. When not hosted here at Chez TwoBuckChuck I am left to my own devices, meaning eating out of a can and drinking out of a 1.75 liter bottle.
The point here is that women are herd animals and bond much more easily than we men do. I have never to the limits of memory met a true female loner, but most of the men I’ve known over age 30 fit that profile, including me. I don’t even know how to “make” a friend anymore, and I’m not sure that I want to. I know many of my neighbors and we chat, share tools, compare notes on what is going on in the neighborhood. But I would not go so far as to call any of them “friends”. Ditto for my coworkers, some of whom I’ve traveled with on business and known for 25 years.
How did I lose the knack for bonding with other men I am not related to? Too busy with career, home, family. And beloved Mrs. doing her unsubtle best to guilt me into doing nothing without her. My sons are at that dangerous age now, having breached their 30s, but so far they have retained many of their friends from adolescence. Oddly enough, the Internet has helped them stay close as they scatter around the world. But I see the warning signs, as the DILs grow increasingly critical of their husbands’ longtime friends. Especially the single ones.
So mammy vetted, alienated and disposed-of your buddies, but retained all her friends (bad influences included).
Sounds like Equality to me. Men stand one-by-one, alone, to face the united Sisterhood. Little wonder that brotherhood is so broken in the anglosphere.
Oddly, The Mrs. adopted my friends in total, and her friends (mostly) went by the wayside, except for a few high school chums that she texts with.
I have a few friends that I have retained over the years, though I almost never get to see them. Probably less than a dozen, all told. It has been noticeably difficult to make new ones with as strong ties as I’ve gotten older. I suspect it has something to do with how older males relate to people in general, and other males in particular. At my age (just retired) contemporaries were rarely compatriots in the workplace, but were more likely to be adversaries and competitors. But that wasn’t the case before age 30. One of my friends I met when we were in the same fifth grade classroom, and went through junior high and high school together.
I have four children, all in their twenties, and my goal is to remain in lots of communication with them. Maybe not as friends, but certainly as more than just the “Dad” who helped raise them. I enjoy their company, when I can get it.
Unlike some of the others commenting here, I was divorced after 22 years of marriage, so no, ex-my wife is not my friend. Not an enemy either, though. We are partners in helping our kids. We rarely communicate unless it is about the kids. If you really want to feel lonely, stay married to someone who doesn’t like who you are.
I now live alone out in the countryside on a piece of wooded land. Neighbors are comfortably distant. And I find that I’m quite content spending my days with my dog, puttering around. I had a girlfriend up until the pandemic, but she was frankly, difficult to get along with. Politically far left of me to the point that when we disagreed, I was often called a racist, a Nazi, or a white supremacists. I found myself breathing a sigh of relief every time she went home. She rarely came down to the country place. Paranoid about Covid and one of those who will go to get every booster they offer. I think she became afraid to see me, one of the great un-vaxxed. I think by this point she has shadowbanned me, since I rarely hear from her. For which I am grateful. My life is much more serene and happy.
That’s the kind of girlfriend that it’s good to be rid of!
Friendship, philia, is one of the Four Loves. Like the others it is a verb and a job. None of the Four “just happen;” they must be cultivated and maintained.
No coincidence, of course, that today’s installment is a demi-human princess and general of an army finding that out.
Have a good weekend, John.
https://machciv.com/2022/11/04/maternal-colour/
I had a great one – I hope yours was, as well!
Yup, you’re dead right. Work and dedication are important in this, like the others.
Great post John.
I have a limited friends I have collected over the years. The two best are the same best friends I had in high school. One I see every time I am back home (so once a month), the other perhaps once every other month. We find ourselves in different situations: for one, his daughter is out and he is divorced, for the other, he is married and they have a high school student and an elementary student and me, married with the last kid on the way out the door. It can be a struggle to get together – everyone is respectful of family time – but we make it work.
Beyond that, it is limited a friend with whom I threw (female, and with whom I have communicated almost every day for the last 6 years), a previous coworker (also female, who is effectively functions as my big sister when I have awkward questions to ask about female, female relationships, or marriage) and – to be frank – a lot of commenters on my blog on whom I know a great deal more about that than many of the folks I “know” on social media.
Other high school friends? Maybe social media. College friends? Not one, oddly enough. Former coworkers? I am in contact with one or two, but the relationship largely drops off as soon as the work relationship does. Interest based friends? Yes, although those relationships also wane when the activity decreases or goes away.
To the point that has been made by others – I can spend long periods of time by myself and not feel lonely in the least (“by msyelf” does not exclude pets, who are just easier to get along with anyway).
But the other point is to look outward – who could you be a friend to that needs one?
“What you feed will grow.”
Never miss an opportunity to tell someone who Dun Gud that about saw and appreciated it.
Never miss an opportunity to apologize “I’m having a bad day / The automated phone tree has rendered me apoplectic, I’ll come back later.”
This is waaaaay easier to do IRL. So do it.
It is easier in real life. The closer the contact, the easier it is. But even a text can help.
I was asked to be tenor in our church choir…ten or eleven miles away when I sang.
Yup! I had a sore throat one day, and couldn’t sing at church. The Mrs. said, “I never knew it could sound so beautiful!”