I Have 472 Friends...How Many Do You Have?

Have you ever felt misunderstood?

Here's an email response I got from customer after I apologized for having to cancel an order because we had misplaced the book--

WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL,

if you present this as the Satan Revolutionary who advocates the permanent overthrow of the Republican Party, then you will get tons of $. However, ya gotta present yourself as an oppressed minority. It could be a slam-dunk.

I was a tad confused by this answer...did he mean to send this to me, or did he have me confused with someone else? Was he angry? Was he trying to make a political statement about my incompetence?? I decided to let this one go...sometimes you just know when an online conversation should not continue.

The technology revolution has forced us into communicating by written word much more than I ever expected. When I was a young college student in love, and my boyfriend was away for the summer, we wrote letters. Not because we preferred it that way, but because those were the days of long-distance charges and very little disposable income. Back then,  I envisioned someday all my communication would be by a Foto-Fone in my living room ("eek!! I can't answer the telephone--I just got out of the shower!"). My typing skills would be just about as crucial as a buggy maker's.

But no...today here I am doing the majority of my communication to friends and family by email, blog, Facebook and texting (and doing mad backspacing and correcting...I really didn't think I'd ever have to type after college!). While this works fine for those who know and love me , I've found it's  is a crappy way to make new friends. Somehow the written word can be easily misconstrued.

I will admit, I have really struggled to make friends since moving to Maryland nine years ago from the Midwest...going from "Minnesota Nice"  to the Nation's Wacky Capital has not been easy. The D.C. area, especially, has such an incredible array of people-types--intense Northeasterners, , slow drawling Southerners, purposefully striding, watch-checking politicos, confused transplanted people from every walk of life and a few other nations, to boot. Trying to make connections has been difficult.

Facebook, bless its heart, can make it even worse.  Contacting local new friends seemed like a good idea, but exchanging brief notes and "comments" on statuses (stati?) has sometimes led to some embarrassing moments ("No...I'm sorry...I think you took that wrong. I never meant to say that I'm really glad your Great-Aunt Boopsie died. I meant I 'liked' that you have such good memories of going catfish noodling with her!"). 

And making actual face-to-face social appointments has been, well, to put it nicely, a bugger. It seems that the majority of the people I have met have social calendars that are booked until 2025 ("ooh, I'd say next Friday night, but I think we have the Uzbekistanian ambassador's reception...can we try for next March sometime?") Or they have children who MUST be in bed by 6 PM. Or they refer me to their wife ("my social secretary") who then refers me back to the husband ("I really don't know his schedule...you'll need to talk to him.") Or they make a date, and then forget it. For real. Who does that? If I have someone offering to feed me, I'm camping out in my car in their driveway for 2 days ahead of time! 

Recently,  I was so annoyed with the situation that I  actually typed up a "Friendship Resume." Before getting into a new relationship, I planned to  hand over my credentials, along with a list of references (my pastor, my old college friends, a co-worker, my cat).  If the Potential Friend would care to take me on, great. If not, I'd move on. Here's my mission statement: 

I am a middle-aged woman who is tired of taking so long to get to the meat of good friendships. I believe in cutting to the chase and letting people know who I am in a timely and efficient manner, so as to expedite the friendship process and achieve deeper and more meaningful exchanges without having to ask others to piece my life together from various and sundry lighthearted exchanges (which can lead to some strange and misleading impressions).

I then continued on with sections such as Personal Highlights, Job Experience, Odd Life Experiences, Activities I Am Interested In, Activities I Am Not Interested In (my personal favorite...things like 'shoe shopping' and 'discussing celebrity news' go there).  I ended the document with this statement: "Thank for your interest. I hope my experience and expertise will meet your friendship needs. I look forward to serving you."

Seems reasonable, right? 

However, I ran across this recently in C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves:"

Friendship, unlike Eros, is uninquisitive. You become a man’s Friend without knowing or caring whether he is married or single or how he earns his living. What have all these ‘unconcerning  things, matters of fact’ to do with the real question, Do you see the same truth? In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about any one else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy, to serve as pegs for an anecdote; never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague, or subordinate. Not among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

This shook me up. If Lewis is right, no, friendship really isn't about laying out my qualifications before new people and seeing if they will "take me on." It's really about just being who I am and seeing who God brings into my path who "sees the same truth." And I need to realize and be comfortable with the fact that even when I like someone, they may not be the friend God has led me to. Can I be happy with the fact that I really don't have 472 friends, even though Facebook says I do? (Besides, as my daughter reminded me...friends help friends move; real friends help you move bodies.)

And you know, I have gained several very good friends in the last nine years here. I thank the good Lord for each of them--those friendships have been forged slowly and well, and have the strength to last for the long haul, I think. There just aren't hundreds of them. 

Take heart, ya'll. I'm pretty sure most of you are in the same boat as I. We are all drifting around in our little lifestyle dinghys  thinking 'I'm the only lonely person I know...everyone else is out there clubbing or 'lunching' while I sit here watching Netflix.' But no, out there are thousands of other bored Netflix-watchers wishing life were different (maybe watching "Law and Order" like you are!). Like I'm trying to do, appeal to the God of the Friendless to help you make the connections you need, just a little bit at a time. It only needs to be one or two. It only takes a skinny isthmus to prevent you from becoming an island. 

But in friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.”
The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host. (C.S. Lewis)