Holy Friendship

Life is sweet.

I always get introspective this time of the year. The approach of my birthday, the indoors weather (though not today; it's gorgeous out there), the change of the seasons. This morning I was thinking about friendship.

In the first half of your life, the friends you make are largely the result of happenstance. For example, you went to college together and some administrator decided to put you in the same room. Or you happened to work at the same job. And I've found those friendships to be immeasurably rewarding. It is always astonishing to me to watch the lives of people you know and love unfold over the years. Seeing how their seemingly Shakespearean tragic flaws catch them up over and over again, and how they struggle through whatever adversity Fortune throws their way, emerging from some Dark Night of the Soul reborn, but still the insecure, questioning guy who is crazy about the Velvet Underground or Socialism or Franciscan Spirituality or whatever that you knew way back when.

But as I grow older (Ahem), I am coming to view friendship in a different light.

The term 'friendship' doesn't seem to quite cut it here. Perhaps because it's been immersed in those relationships of happenstance from the early years and has taken on a sophomoric tinge because of that.

"Enduring Connection" seems to fit the bill more, awkward though it may be.

When I was a pup, and I'd meet a hot man who seemed to have it all together, I wanted to fuck him. Or have him fuck me. Then, over the past decade or so, when I'd meet that hot, together man, I wanted to date him. And in a few cases, I've been able to do that.

And not that I'm no longer looking to fuck hot, together men, or to date them, but I sense that what would really be sustaining for the long run is something different. After all, you can't date all of them. And in these days of the World Wide Internet, fucking is soooo dependent upon geography.

But that leaves Enduring Connections.

Those men out there, men I've met, men I know, in San Diego, New Hampshhire, Toronto, Fort Lauderdale... Those Lions. Men who have made their own rules for living life, and are uncompromising in taking that on.

I think I would do well in the second half of my life to establish Enduring Connections with these men. Men I will know for a long time. To keep up with them, spend time with them, learn from them, and see how their lives evolve. See what bargains with the devil they make, what Forresterian 'Only This' messages they have to relay to those who would listen.

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