Sunday 28 October 2012

Webs & skeins: what connects friends

As those of you who read my last post know, I recently experienced a profound sense of connection with a far-distant friend through a shared sense of loss, yet we have not even been in the same part of the country for over twenty years.  That got me thinking and wondering about friendship and why it is that we can feel so intensely connected to someone we haven't seen in years, and yet we might never get beyond the surface of someone we see almost daily.  

After mulling it over, and looking at my long-distance friendships, I began to see certain similarities, almost none of which explained the longevity of these particular relationships.  Many of my friends are parents, but that doesn't explain it, or at least not by itself.  Some are relatively new at the game, while others, like me, have raised at least one child to adulthood.  It's not religion, at least not in the organized, denominational sense of the word.  My circle embraces Christians of all stripes, agnostics and pagans, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs, Jews and Muslims.  There might even be an atheist or two thrown in for good measure.  Certainly there are shared values, but that only scratches the surface.  I've met many people who shared my values, but precious few of them have become the kind of enduring friends with whom there is a shortcut to connection.  

It's not definitely not education, since I never managed to complete university, and my friends run the gamut from high school dropouts to PhD candidates, and it's not intelligence, or at least not in isolation.  While most of my friends are intelligent, I've met many allegedly bright people with whom I could find no common ground.  And it's not technology in and of itself, although most of us use those tools to aid in building and maintaining our connections.  

What it seems to be is a sense of humour and a way of looking at the world as a series of connections, a series of interconnected stories that need to be told and retold to be remembered, which creates a kinship that has nothing to do with the DNA of our bodies and everything to do with the DNA of a really good story.  Perhaps that is why we all seem to have some sort of creative outlet, whether literary, visual, or musical.  Not that we all make our living through our endeavours, although some of us are fortunate enough to do so.  I am not one of them, although working the front line in the hospitality industry certainly requires the ability to think outside the box. 

I think what I love about all these friends of mine, is that they think.  Deeply, lovingly, sarcastically, with humour and childlike openness, about themselves, the world around them, and their place in that world. 

Whatever it is, it serves to connect me to a lit-loving med student in Manila, a social media scholar in Charlottetown, an historical interpreter, several musicians, and a Toronto-based aficionado of the absurd, among others.  And maybe what it is doesn't matter as much as the fact that it exists. 

No comments:

Post a Comment