I’ll be there for you
(When the rain starts to pour)
I’ll be there for you
(Like I’ve been there before)
I’ll be there for you
(‘Cause you’re there for me too)
The Rembrandts
Friendship is like a contract, a memorandum of understanding: If your life is great, I will be there to enjoy the highs, I will re-tell the stories ad infinitum of our japes, scrapes and ill conceived adventures. The time when we were lost in Amsterdam, right outside our hotel, the time when you threw a bread roll at the Spanish gendarme in Barcelona, the walk home when we put the runt of the litter on top of a bus stop. The stories are great and get better with re-telling and embellishment, but this is the easy bit of friendship. Anyone can do this, frankly who wants friends who are there exclusively for the good times…
Real friends and I mean real friends, not just the Facebook bastardisation of the term, not followers on Instagram, but real friends, are in it for the long game. They choose to be there for the low times and the good times. They choose to accept you warts an all, no matter what the geographical distance between you, no matter the difference in lifestyles or relationship status.
I am proud to say that I have very few friends, but the chosen few are an unending a reservoir of hope and light for me. A more diverse group you would struggle to find, small, tall, married, engaged, right wing, left wing, leave and remain. (Let’s hope that last group becomes a side note on a best forgotten blot on UK history.) But, in their different ways the are a rock solid foundation for me, we have brought each other up and oh how we have grown. Let’s go back to the bread roll incident, there is context. My buddy was in the darkest of places for reasons I shall not share. I knew this, so I smoothed the situation over and extricated him from Las Ramblas without it ever being news worthy. ‘Teachers drunk shock.’ would not have been remotely interesting in the Daily Mail. I looked after him like he would have done for me, no questions, no discussion, just empathy. But why? We have no familial connection, yet it was second nature, a reflex and I didn’t choose to do it, I just did what was needed. The complement has been repaid a million times, we have seen each other through the toughest of times. We confide in each other, even though we may meet up no more than a couple of times a year. We share more with each other than acquaintances of forty years that I see twenty times more often in a year. But why? It has to be more than being equally crap sportsmen.
These fine companions who I am lucky enough to call friends, are the people who will check in with you when things are not going to plan. They are not going to be on the phone every evening because boys don’t do that. Nevertheless you know they are invested in you. What has become inescapable is that not all the key players care enough. Parents and partners are intrinsically linked to the ebb and flow of family life. They have a visceral connection which in my experience cannot be severed. But why would people close to you, appear to be uninvested in you? Why wouldn’t they care if their buddy was retiring due to ill health short of his 47th birthday. The answer is infinitely complex, not even the great minds of Rees Mogg and Bo Jo could sort the wood from the trees on this one. What makes the situation more unfathomable is the occasional glimpse of understanding , followed by more Edwardian attitude that individuals should look after themselves. An Ayn Rand’s guide to friendship. It maybe sub-Machiavellian reflex to protect themselves, a way of insulating themselves from the pain or it could be that they are just narcissistic. Who knows? Does it matter? Should I care that they don’t. Is it useful to cogitate and muse upon the fact that I would care if the roles were reversed. What matters is that you have the people to keep you afloat in the bad times and that you soar with these good, good people in the favourable times. The rest of them are merely the canned laughter in the show that is our lives. Sometimes sweet, always artificial, occasionally entertaining, but fundamentally fake.
“A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.” Charles Darwin
Michael
grumpyteacherwithpd 