Do we still care about friendships?

Here are some questions to ponder before and after you read the rest of this article:

*Do you have a best friend? That is, a best friend who is truly a regular part of your life, who helps balance you out and keep you in check? 

*Do you know at least one of your neighbors? Do you go out of your way to speak with them in passing, even if it is a moment of small talk?

*Do you smile at strangers when you make eye contact? Not a flirty smile, but just a small gesture of showing a friendly demeanor?

*Are you more introverted and choose to keep your friends to a highly trustworthy minimum? Or are you more extroverted and thrive best when having many friends and social opportunities?

*Have you tried building an authentic, in-person connection with any of your friends on social media?

*Do you think you are lacking time to invest in a meaningful friendship?

While there is plenty of analysis out there about toxic relationships, that social media is ironically enabling rampant social distancing that long predates the current pandemic, and whether individualism is more important than collectivism or vice versa – one thing is quite apparent: The state of relationships in our society is vastly different from just a generation ago.

Just look at all the Generation Xers, Baby Boomers, and even the early wave of Millennials (who are now in their mid to late 30’s), or pretty much anyone over the age of 30: So many people who did not grow up primarily in the Internet age love to reminisce about childhood memories: recess on the playground; riding BMX bikes around and around your neighborhood block, and maybe even scraping your knees from doing wheelies and playing daredevil with your friends; or slumber parties with your best friends, where using a landline to prank calling random people was the highlight of the evening; or spending hours at a time playing board games, or “old school” video game systems such as Atari, Nintendo, and Sega.

And, of course, there is the ocean of memes that brag about whose generation is the best: “If you grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and collected Star Wars action figures, your generation is the best!” Or “If you wore bell bottoms in high school and listened to the Bee Gees, your generation is the best!”  Or “if you grew up listening to the Beatles, protested the ‘real’ meaning of civil rights, and watched the moon landing live, your generation is the best!” Or “if you grew up imitating the Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, your generation is the best!”

The late Joseph Campbell, a well-known professor of comparative mythology and religion, and a major influence on understanding consciousness and its relationship to meaning in life, once said in an interview: “Many people say they want to ‘experience life’. But I say they are seeking the **experience of being alive**.

That is a major reason why our nostalgia for the pre-digital world runs deep in our memories. We fondly remember the times that we *experienced being alive*. Think about how great it felt to be 16 years old on a Friday night, loading up your three best friends in your parents’ old station wagon, driving to the homecoming football game with the windows rolled down, sticking your head out the window to let the cool Fall air splash against your face, and passing playful insults back and forth with your friends.

And albeit a cheesy moment in the movie Titanic, you were Leonardo Di Caprio’s character balancing yourself on the front end of the ship and yelling “I am king of the world!”. And sometimes under the influence of the few beers you guzzled down, thanks to your friend with the fake ID and your desire to flirt with danger a bit and hopefully not get caught.

We love the idea of living in the moment. Whether a person is free-spirited or lives a quite structured life, we ALL think about moments of incredible release.  A vacation on a tropical island. Or an adrenalin rush activity such as bungie jumping or competing in a fitness obstacle course. Or spending a wild weekend in Las Vegas. Or taking a road trip to a new destination. Or spending quiet time out in a mountainous area surrounded by the smell of pine trees. We unconsciously thrive on boosting our endorphins and dopamine levels. We ALL live for some form of pleasure.

We love friends who will talk with us for hours about all subjects under the sun. We love not being bound to anything except those special, intensely gratifying moments we accumulate with our friends.

And these experiences aren’t just limited to teenagers or 20-somethings. Some adults refuse to fall into the status quo of work, raise a family, eat, watch TV, sleep, repeat. Moreover, most people are seeking some form of meaning, some reason to be connected with the world around us. Friendships help us explore that meaning.

Then why do we currently live in world where it is so difficult to create and maintain deeply meaningful friendships? Why do we keep depriving ourselves of that *experience of being alive*?

We already know that social media is running its course with meaningful social connections. We are so overly saturated with what everyone else around us is thinking, their bombardment of selfies and other pics, and the astronomical number of heated debates happening at any given moment, that we are just parroting life more than actually *experiencing being alive*.

We are all guilty of it. I am too. We are also all guilty of making excuses for why we don’t have enriching, in-person relationships. Or we play the coy game: We test people to see who is going to make the first move to build and maintain the friendship. Or we make the rather asinine claim that we are too “busy” with work, family, etc. Yes, responsibilities as an adult in this world can be a bit overwhelming sometimes: We know that we can’t just go out whenever we want or be generally irresponsible — unless, of course, you are in a situation where you never have to worry about money, or you live as the ultimate bachelor, even if its to your own undoing or ruins relationships with the people in your life.

Balance is, of course, crucial. We certainly do not want to be reckless with our responsibilities. But do we really want our often mundane, daily grind lives to be our pinnacle of achievement? Our personal goals – move up the career ladder, earn a higher education degree, have a family, move to a different city, live an overall comfortable life – certainly have their place. However, if our relationships suffer because we are hyper-focused on being “busy” — then should relationships matter at all?

Of course they should. But then that means building and consistently nurturing your relationships – starting with your friendships.  We may live in a world now filled with so many conveniences: This pandemic has especially shown that you virtually never have to go anywhere or interact with anyone, and still live a pretty comfortable, quietly independent life. Worse, we have fallen into the trap of seeing other people as options and not necessities.  In other words – and whether the more introverted types like it or not – we all *need* each other. We *need* human companionship. We can keep pretending that we are just fine on our own, that we can do it all on our own – but the reality is we can’t. And we shouldn’t.

A real, healthy friendship means having a consistent support system. It means being able to relate well to each other. It means exploring your differences – even if they get heated — and seeing where you can meet in the middle. For example, think about all the people who are firing off at each other about politics, religion, sex, body dysmorphia, bratty kids, you name it: Yet most of those people don’t even *know* each other. They just know each other by their comments on social media, or by pic or sounds bites of their life. What if, instead, we made the real effort to build an authentic friendship?

Yes, not all friendships work out. Yes, some friendships do come and go. However, the core of it is whether we really care about friendships. If we do – then we have no excuses.

Make a real friend. Allow that friendship to be one of the reasons you embrace the *experience of being alive*.

We all know that there is little to no substitute for a great best friend. Be THAT friend.