Crisis of Friendship

The other day, my mind wandered to friendship, and how modern politics is eroding it, undermining it, and making it secondary to superficial, stupid, unimportant things. Already, we do not trust our news, information, leaders, and old habits. Now, friendship is at risk. Why? Please, an epiphany!

What is life made of, if not friends, family, work, play, service, and gratitude? Historically, we put friends high on that list, came to their aid, enjoyed their company, tolerated their divergent views, loved them for tolerating ours, and cultivated unbreakable bonds. Do we still?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.”

How beautiful, how well said, and how increasingly rare. That is what friendship should be, simplicity itself, trusting because trust is earned, lasting as good things do, fortified over time by the lasting. As Jefferson wrote, “Honest simplicity is … worthy of being cherished.”

But what have we now? What is happening around us? Is our circle of friends expanding, being preserved, and fortified by weathering the daily deluge of political nonsense, or is it shrinking?

Are we putting words aside, with their sharpness and power to divide, sticking to what we know our friends are, holding them dear for their meaning, words notwithstanding? Henry David Thoreau, Emerson’s student, wrote: “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

Or are we falling into the folly of rejecting old friends, forgetting a friendship broken is hard to repair, and that when we come back to find it, it may not be there? Are we remembering who we are at our best – and also at our worst, which reminds us what our friends are at their best?

Somehow, the trend seems toward superficiality, rejection, anger, taking it out on whoever is nearby, often a friend with only the sanctity of their mind to guide them, wishing you no ill.

Walter Winchell, an old journalist, taught lessons with humor, sometimes accidentally. Whether sincerely or sardonically, he wrote: “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” Then one must ask, and wonder about ourselves, who is walking out?

More practically, WWII-era movie star, seller of war bonds, patriot, and patron of refugees, Marlene Dietrich once quipped, “It’s the friends you can call at 4 a.m. that matter.” And that is so true, is it not?  It’s the people we know we can count on, who forgive us our foibles, we call.

So, what is happening to a culture that puts political views, rejectionism, and the satisfaction of hating someone for their convictions, whether poorly formed or not, over friendship? It is in crisis.

Not all friendships come to the level of sacrifice, I suppose, forcing us to quiet ourselves and hear what is not being said, which could be more important than what is. Some certainly do.

In a sense, one has to return to being a child, to that time when bonds formed were trusted, and valued, making them natural, not something to be avoided or shed for an opinion not shared.

At least we might return to that frame of mind. Two quotes, one from recently reading Jefferson, and the other from a soul who knew suffering all her life, reinforce the value of friends.

Late in life, Jefferson wrote on the emptiness of power. “I long to be in the midst of children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise. I would rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends … than to occupy the most splendid post.”

Helen Keller, a hundred years later, put it simply, seeing what many do not. “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” Friendship – the sanctity of it – is being rattled, gradually ravaged by politics. We can stop that, should.  Epiphany: It is not secondary.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.