On Friendship (Part II)

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known.

—Chuck Palahniuk

Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a community of those you love and who love you. In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right? But here’s the secret; in between, we need others as well.

—Morrie Schwartz

When I was about 13, I read a book, Hatchet, where the protagonist, Brian, is stranded alone after his plane crashes in the wilderness. Brian manages to survive on meager sustenance and is eventually rescued. It was a good book, but it was the epilogue in particular that made a lasting impression on me. For the rest of his life, whenever Brian goes into a grocery store, he marvels at the variety and abundance of food. Ostensibly, because of his experience, his appreciation of food has increased. My own appreciation of food increased vicariously through Brian's (fictitious) experience.

Right, so what does any of that have to do with friendship? Well, I feel that because I was "socially-deprived" (i.e., cloistered) as a homeschooler, I have a special fascination with and appreciation of friendships. Although I joke that I didn't (or don't) have friends because I was homeschooled, there is a kernel of truth. Recently, due mostly to (1) working on a personality and friendship study, (2) having had several close friends leave, and (3) making new friends, I've been thinking a lot about friendships. Besides the topic of friendship, this post has no unifying theme.

One of the most robust findings in happiness research is that social relations are essential for well-being. This may explain why introverts tend to be more dour than their extroverted peers. (To the surprise of many who know me, I'm actually an introvert. I actually like to think of myself as an ambivert, but I always score high in introversion on conventional psychometrics.) On the other hand, although introverts by nature tend to have less social interactions than extroverts, introverts tend to prefer and have more meaningful conversations than small talk, which in turn is associated with happiness.

I've never really had a best friend (unfortunately, since having a best friend seems to be an important determinant of subjective well-being), but I've been blessed to have always had a handful of good friends. I like to think of it as having several best friends, but it probably doesn't work that way.

I am not suave/cool by any definition of those terms. I do like to think I'm cool in a dorky/nerdy sense, even though those concepts (i.e., suave/cool and dorky/nerdy) are antithetical in nature. Anyway, having been homeschooled, I think I lack some of the basic social skills (e.g., http://xkcd.com/222/) and most of the advanced ones (e.g., it takes me a while to figure out the social dynamics in groups), but I'm okay with that. First, I'm learning. Second, a friend mentioned that although I may say dorky things (e.g., the contrapositive of a true proposition is always true!), she always feels comfortable around me. Being a dork but putting others at ease is fine with me. Honestly, I actually revel in my particular brand of dorkiness. Yes, being a dork may make me less attractive as a social partner in general, but I'm not out to impress people. Besides, the friends I hang out with tend to appreciate my dorkiness.

Yes, it's true to some extent that our time and energy are limited, and thus the number of friends we can have are limited. Or, at least, there is a tradeoff in quality vs. quantity, both in friends and in the time we spend them. Then again, I like to think of friendship as being similar to the relationship between some (hopefully most) parents and their children: a parent's love isn't spread thinner with more children, it grows. Regarding time, there's a difference between chronos (objective/quantitative time) and kairos (subjective/quality time). I only see some of my closest friends once a year. Some I haven't even seen in several years, yet we still share a close bond. Similarly, a few hours of substantive conversation can make me feel closer to some friends that I've known relatively briefly compared to people that I've known for years

A friend once asked me if my friendships were based off of convenience. Meeting friends is definitely due to convenience/chance (e.g., I wouldn't have met most of my friends if they didn't happen to go to the same university; lookup "propinquity theory" if you're interested), but the friends I tend to gravitate toward and hold on to tend to be good people with perspective. By "good," I mean that they tend to be amicable, unselfish, and have a sense of social justice. My idiosyncratic definition of perspective entails sentience/consciousness, sapience, transcendence of one's self, and seeing things in a non-myopic manner. Of course, not all of my friends are epitomes of both, but the people that I'm closest to do tend to embody both ("anthropomorphic representation" and "goodness and perspective incarnate" are somewhat over the top, but not completely inaccurate).

I mentioned to a friend something along the lines of liking to hang out with people who could provide perspective. She noted, quite astutely, that that sounded like I'm using people. I had to admit that she was right and that it could be construed that way. But whether cognizant of it or not, we are always (or at least, often) using other people. Practically everything we purposefully do is, in a sense, selfish. Why do I serve in a homeless shelter? Because I like to help people. Why do you hang out with your friends? Presumably because you enjoy their company. Of course, one's "selfish" actions do not preclude benefiting others. Perhaps I'm being presumptuous, but I like to think that my friendships are mutually beneficial in one way or another. Yes, there are alternative explanations for why my friends would invite me to hang out with them--or, conversely, accept my invitations--but the most parsimonious (and IMO, plausible) explanation is that we like each other for one reason or another and mutually benefit from our interactions. Friendships are not zero-sum.

Building off of the last three points (as well as the quote by Palahniuk), be careful regarding the friends you keep. Our friends shape who we are, perhaps more so than most people realize.

For "Part I," see On Friendship (an abridged excerpt from The Little Prince).