Friends

This weekend there was a YSA Easter Conference in Paris, France that I was privileged to attend. While in attendance, I had the opportunity to see some old friends. I've been thinking lately about how much work it is to keep in touch, and how it requires active participation by both parties. In today's world, where travel has become so common, we meet a lot of new people in our lives. My life has certainly been no exception. My life has crossed paths with many others.

As a result, I've been thinking a lot about what this word "friend" means, but more importantly about our relationships with others in general. Those of you who know me well are probably already familiar with the introduction I'm about to give on this subject, but I hope you'll humor its repetition in setting the discussion.

My first semester at college was one full of new experiences. I always love a fresh start, of which I had my fair share growing up (I've lived in about 20 or 25 different places, I stopped counting a while ago). As much as I love my friends, I must admit I love the opportunity to redefine myself, to start from scratch. When you live in the same place for too long, you get to know people and they get to know you. When I was younger and even more foolish than I am now (if you can imagine that), I sometimes said and did things that reflected a very different person from who I am. I realize I'm still guilty of this to some extent, but I hope it's a lesser one.

Coming to BYU was just one of these experiences. I was thrown into a setting where I knew no one and no one knew me for all intents and purposes, and I liked that. I arrived several days after everyone else, but everyone was very kind in welcoming me to the apartment complex, perhaps due at least in part to our common Mormon background. The Church has a way of opening us towards others.

I was only at school for one semester before my mission (which was, incidentally, another one of these "fresh starts" I love so much). A few weeks into the semester, as I was walking to campus from our apartment buildings, a girl from my Ward who was walking with us made a comment to the effect of: "You know, I'm glad I have great friends like you guys" to a group of my friends and me. I wasn't quite sure how to take this comment. I remember my response though, and it still holds true. "Are we really friends?" I asked myself. Then I said to her, "You know, as much as I like you and respect you, I don't know that we're friends. I've only known you for a few weeks, we don't really do THAT much together, and my guess is that after this semester, we will fall out of contact and lose touch. I'm not really sure I can call you a friend. An acquaintance, perhaps, but a friend?"

This response shocked the girl and at least startled my friends. I suppose that wasn't the politically correct way to answer that question, but I'm not sure I'd rescind my response today if given the chance. A real friend is someone who'll tell me straight up what he thinks. A friend is someone I can trust. Someone I'll be in touch with in 5, 10, or 15 years, someone about whose well-being I'm sincerely concerned, someone who drops me a line if it's been a while. I could go on, but I think you get where I'm going with this.

The word is of Germanic origin meaning "to love." I suppose we should love everyone in a general sense, as the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches, but I must admit I'm more concerned about my family and my real friends than someone I've only known for a few weeks. Call me self-centered, but that's the reality.

Some might argue this is a battle of semantics. Some might say there's a difference between a friend and a close friend, for example, or a best friend. I suppose most of my arguments could be reduced to semantics, but maybe that's just because my course of study has made me keenly aware of the bastardization of English and language and general. Words don't mean what they used to. Some might argue this is just the inevitable evolution of language, but isn't there something more at stake here? How do I convey the meaning of what I consider a "friend?" Must I resort to qualifying my friends, or is our language becoming so poor as to no longer contain the simple purities of yore? It is said that language perfectly (or nearly perfectly) meets the needs and the culture of its native speakers. For example, as a native speaker of American English, the language should contain the words to express the meaning of the point I'm trying to get across, based on the culture in which I currently live. This scares me even more. Have we removed from our culture the true meaning of friend?

An express example comes quickly to my mind: facebook. Lest you think me a hypocrite, I must confess my appreciation for facebook and all it does. I am a strong believer that facebook is one of the technologies that allows me to keep in touch with my real friends more readily than I might otherwise. It's quite possibly the easiest way for me to check up on others and maintain relationships that might otherwise fall by the wayside. This said, I still think facebook is at least partly responsible for the degradation of the word "friend." On facebook, we become "friends" with people, some of whom we've never met, some of whom we'll never meet in person. We look at the profiles of our friends' friends, and then their friends, and we see we have a few things in common. Without a second thought, we add them as "friends." I'm not going to argue it's impossible to become friends with someone I've never met in real life before, but I will certainly contend it impedes the natural course of events. Perhaps the language, along with the culture, is changing. An argument on what culture means and where that word comes from is another discussion.

And so I've thought about what makes a friend a friend for me. A friend is someone I could call at any time of the day or night if I needed help. Try this test: if you were to call someone you know in the middle of the night because you needed him or her to buy you a plane ticket home for you and put it on his or her credit card, would he or she do it? What about if your grandmother just died and you needed someone to talk to, would you be comfortable letting this person see you as vulnerable? needy? What about if you just made a big mistake and you need some advice, or you aren't sure how to handle a certain situation, could you talk to this person? Moreover, is the person happy to talk to you and honestly concerned about your worry? Is he or she willing to share his or her time willingly to help you, or is the fact that you're calling in the middle of the night really bothersome? Or when you're at work? Or at home? Hopefully, we're good friends that would only make such calls in real emergencies. Hopefully we're making more deposits than withdrawals on such accounts.

When I think about all the people I know (outside my immediate family), I can count on a hand (or two if I were really in a pinch) the people I'd be comfortable bothering in the given circumstances. Maybe I'm just unpopular, but I think it's probably the same for you if you think about it. Putting the people in our lives to these tests might reveal that those closest to you, including your family and those you consider your best friends, aren't really friends at all, at least not in the way we're defining the word.

This is just one test. I could go through more, but I think you get the idea. See if you can come up with your own test.

I hope I haven't offended anyone who considers me a friend. I am fortunate to be surrounded by so many good people. Please know my argument is largely semantic, but also think about who your true friends are. I'd like to think I'm the kind of person who'd be willing to help out more than just a handful of people in a pinch, but that isn't what I'm getting at here. I imagine most of us would be willing to help out a much larger group of people in need than a mere handful. But that isn't what I'm getting at. Whom would you be comfortable calling?

This is just one of a few topics I've been thinking about, but I'm out of time for now.