have, I’m still not sure I understand. What I did get out of that conversation, though, was that there seems to be a biological drive to create friendships. So, there must be a purpose behind them.
The need for people and community is hard-wired into our psyches. Studies of human brain activity show over and over that the presence of a close friend releases dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin into our brains. Those are the “pleasure” hormones, the same ones that make us fall in love and keep us from killing our children (always a benefit!). We don’t merely get silly or goofy when our friends are around; we get high. Suddenly, my high school and college shenanigans make a lot more sense.
What I keep coming back to is the idea that we still need our friends and family for safety and survival, just maybe not the physical kind. Because of the internet and technology, it’s absolutely possible to work from home, shop from home, bank from home, and have everything we need to keep our bodies functioning delivered right to our front door. There are now services that will even bring your purchases inside your house, making it unnecessary to even step outside onto your front porch. We practically never have to interact in person with another human being ever again. As a result, many of us have become quasi-hermits. We huddle inside the home theaters in our McMansions, eat the dinner that was delivered, build ten-foot-high fences so we don’t even have to acknowledge that our neighbors exist, and text with our virtual friends all night long. (Heaven forbid we should actually call someone.) Then we wonder why we’re depressed and living under the oppressive weight of this modern loneliness.
It’s because we need people. We’re herd animals, remember? We may not be out hunting big game with our Cro-Magnon posse, but that doesn’t change the fundamental fact that we are designed to live in community and have relationships with other people. We need our friends to help keep us emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy. Just as nutritious food feeds and energizes the body, our friends feed and energize our minds and souls.
My grandmother is known to remark, “If I want to know who you are, I’ll just look at the company you keep.” I didn’t really understand what she meant until middle and high school, when I saw how the good kids I knew were influenced into doing some pretty bad things. Their reputations were ruined because of the people they hung out with on the weekends. There were crowds of nice kids, and gangs of “the other kind.” In our smallish Texas town, your character was judged by the crowd you ran with, and it was extremely hard to salvage your good name once it was tarnished by hanging with troublemakers. There’s a reason for it, of course. The fact is, most of us will allow our character to rise or fall to the level of the people around us. Therefore, we should surround ourselves with good people.
Over the years, I have learned to discern which friends are worth investing my effort, time, and energy in, and which aren’t. I stopped looking at surface qualities, such as looks, age, or social standing, and began to look instead for people who made me laugh, brought me joy, gave me the gift of their honest selves, and weren’t afraid to tell me the truth when I screwed up. I love meeting new people, seeing who they have in their own inner circles and how they treat them. (My grandmother was right: You can tell everything by the company your friends keep. So, pay attention.)
Friends are there to bring out our better selves
Close friends can also serve as our own Jiminy Cricket, pricking our conscience and fueling our better natures. They may be quick with a joke that raises eyebrows and makes us snort with laughter, but they also make us want to stretch and become the best people we are capable of being. When I was a small girl, my mother told me that the mark of a truly great friend was that they would make you want to be a better person; if they didn’t, then they weren’t really that great a friend.
My best friend and I keep each other on the straight and narrow by calling each other out on our crap. She doesn’t let me get away with anything, and I return the favor. We listen to each other’s excuses when we aren’t as good as we ought to be, and then we say: “That’s a great excuse. What’s the real reason?” We’re hard on each other, but God help the person who criticizes us, even if it’s ourselves.
On a particularly down day a few years back, I cut into her “I’m not good enough/patient enough/whatever enough” diatribe to tell her: “No one gets to be this mean to my friend, not even you. You may be frustrated right now, but you’re talking about the friend I love, and I’m not going to listen to her being run down like this.”
She laughed and sighed, but this has now become a standard thing in our friendship — we don’t let people talk trash about others, not even about ourselves. Instead, we say, “Yeah, I get it — this is hard right now — but here’s where you are killing it …” Those reminders of all the places we’re actually succeeding, even when it seems as if the sky is falling, have pulled us out of plenty of tailspins.
Because we’re so close, we get to see the patterns in each other’s lives, the patterns we don’t often see for ourselves. That gives us the perspective to tell each other hard truths, like, “Every time you spend time with your sister-in-law you become a lunatic crazy person” or, “Spending time with your mother makes you eat all the things; maybe you should clean out the junk food and stock up on carrots before she comes over” or, the painful to hear, “You suck with money; maybe you need to take a class on money management or turn the checkbook over to your husband.” Who else is going to tell you this if it’s not your friends? Who else is going to be close enough to the daily living of your life? Who else wants you there hanging out with them in heaven so that they’re willing to make “being amazing” a group project?
Henry Ford was known to say, “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.”
Exactly so.
Good friends help keep us calm and out of jail
There are days when the whole world seems to be working right on my last nerve and I become the teapot from the nursery rhyme: “When I get all steamed up hear me shout …” Boom. Then my head explodes, and I word vomit all over the person next to me, savaging them with the venom of my anger. Or I call my best friend and rant about the state of the world, how much I detest bureaucracy, and how “I’m just done with it all! Done, and I mean it!” She’ll quietly sip her coffee and listen before she goes to work helping me figure out the whole stinking mess.
For the past fourteen years, Kara and I have been the confidante and sounding board for each other. We are the voice of reason, peeling each other off the ceiling, talking the other off the edge of the cliff, and cooling boiling tempers. The ability to help balance us out and remind us of our better natures is part of why having what Anne-with-an-E Shirley called a “bosom friend” is so valuable (my first Green Gables reference in this book). Throughout our lives, there will only be a small handful of people we will trust with the whole truth of who we are, and who will trust us in return. These people are valuable and necessary to our own good mental health. They are the friends we trust to be honest with us — and to protect us from the worst we can be.
They help us chase our dreams
There is a woman I know who took seventeen years to get her college degree. She took her first class when she was nineteen and finally walked across the stage at thirty-six. Along the way she got married, had three children, and moved as a military wife a half-dozen times. But she stuck with her studies. Her friends were there for every step. They listened to her plans and dreams, helped her study for tests, and supported her through the days when she wanted to walk away from it all. On the day she finally graduated, they filled an entire row in the stands and screamed her name as she was handed her diploma. Her victory was also theirs.
Good friends don’t let you quit on your dreams for yourself. They know that being static isn’t
