Living & Learning for Friendship

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately; what it is, where I learned about it, and how it comes to fruition. In the summer of 2006, I picked up a copy of the Dallas Morning News and encountered an article detailing a recently released study published in the American Sociological Review that found that Americans report having only two close friends, down from three close friends when a similar study was completed in 1985. The most discouraging news of all, however, was that the study found that a quarter of Americans say they have no other person with whom they can talk about important things (i.e., a real friend). This is double the number of people who said the same in 1985.

This is the increasingly “friendless” culture from which our students hail. You can imagine the reasons we should be concerned? A friendless society is lonely, and lonely people suffer an existence apart from one of the important ways God forms us—through others. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it well: “Being free means being free for the other because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.” Our stories, for sure, are meant to be told, heard, and retold once again.

But what is friendship? As of this month, I’m approaching 300 friends on Facebook. I, like so many others, no doubt use the term loosely! Aristotle describes three kinds of friendship. The last and most rare is a mutual commitment to the shared conception of the good human life. He seems to describe those special relationships that encompass common moral commitments, an uncanny willingness to seek the best in, and for, a friend. And, these friendships come with permanence, a commitment for the long-haul, through thick and thin. I’ve been questioning . . . How many relationships like this do I have? How about you?

For many students, college life has served to facilitate the exploration of amorous relationships and often marks the beginning of the journey toward marriage. Our culture teaches us that marriage requires significant investment, discernment, and self-reflection in order to understand personal expectations and moral philosophy. Students seem to understand that making this type of commitment has far-reaching implications for life beyond college. Perhaps friendships of the non-amorous sort need to be considered with the same seriousness. Understanding that significant life-changing relationships of all kinds require sacrifice is important. A colleague recently joked that the only sort of relationship more challenging than those of the romantic kind are the non-romantic. If this is true, and I believe it is, students must be presented with appropriate expectations—that friendships of the best kind require work and sacrifice.

Of course, commitment to marriage these days seems to be waning. Life-long friendship, according to the sociological data, appears to be less prevalent. What if we were more intentional in understanding friendship; marking them with commitment in overt ways, and expecting hard times along the way?
The Waco Chamber of Commerce recently endorsed a book with hopes of stirring a year-long conversation. The book, Same Kind of Different as Me, tells the true to life story of friendship between Ron Hall, a white, wealthy art dealer and Denver Moore, a black, poor, homeless man. One particular conversation in the book stirred my emotion in an unexpected way.

After being introduced to each other, Ron Hall casually suggested he and Moore could be “friends.” Days later, the following conversation took place as detailed on pages 106 and 107.

He [Denver] stared down at the steam rolling up from his coffee cup. “I been thinkin a lot about what you asked me.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “What did I ask you?”

“’Bout bein your friend.”

My jaw dropped an inch. I’d forgotten that when I told him at the Cactus Flower Café that all I wanted from him was his friendship, he’d said he’d think about it. Now, I was shocked that anyone would spend a week pondering such a question. While the whole conversation had slipped my mind, Denver had clearly spent serious time preparing his answer.

He looked up from his coffee, fixing me with one eye, the other squinted like Clint Eastwood. “There’s something I heard ‘bout white folks that bothers me, and it has to do with fishin.”

He was serious and I didn’t dare laugh, but I did try to lighten the mood a bit. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you,” I said, smiling. “I don’t even own a tackle box.”

Denver scowled, not amused. “I think you can.”

He spoke slowly and deliberately, keeping me pinned with that eyeball, ignoring the Starbucks groupies coming and going on the patio around us.

“I heard that when white folks go fishin they do something called ‘catch and release.’”

Catch and release? I nodded solemnly, suddenly nervous and curious at the same time.

“That really bothers me,” Denver went on. “I just can’t figure it out. ‘Cause when colored folks go fishin, we really proud of what we catch, and we take it and show it off to everybody that’ll look. Then we eat what we catch…in other words, we use it to sustain us. So it really bothers me that white folks would go to all that trouble to catch a fish, then when they done caught it, just throw it back in the water.”

He paused again, and the silence between us stretched a full minute. Then: “Did you hear what I said?”

I nodded, afraid to speak, afraid to offend.

Denver looked away, searching the blue autumn sky, then locked onto me again with that drill-bit stare. “So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me: If you is fishin for a friend you just gon catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend.”

The world seemed to halt in midstride and fall silent around us like one of those freeze-frame scenes on TV. I could hear my heart pounding and imagined Denver could see it popping my breast pocket up and down. I returned Denver’s gaze with what I hoped was a receptive expression and hung on.

Suddenly his eyes gentled and he spoke more softly than before: “But if you is look for a real friend, then I’ll be one. Forever.”

Denver has seen something we’ve experienced all too often—friends that come in the good times and go in the bad.

So here’s an idea (and one that I’ll share in greater depth in a forthcoming article in About Campus): Maybe teaching friendship should be a more intentional part of the curriculum in a college or university? Perhaps there wouldn’t be so many lonely people out there—and in here? Perhaps residence halls, especially, provide a particularly effective venue, a learning laboratory if you will, for establishing friendships of a special kind that transcend our days and change our world in most unexpected ways.

Can we teach friendship? Might you join me in thinking about this more?


References
Aristotle. (2004). The Nicomachean Ethics. (J.A.K. Thomson, Trans.). New York: Penguin.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1959). Creation and the fall/temptation: Two Biblical Studies. (J. Fletcher & E. Bethge, Trans.). New York: Macmillian.
Hall, Ron & Moore, Denver (2006). Same Kind of Difference as Me. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L. & Brashears, M. (2006). Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over Two Decades. American Sociological Review, pages 353-375.

Dr. Frank Shushok is Dean for Student Learning & Engagement. An article he wrote on friendship will be published in About Campus later this year.