Musings on Friendship

There is a line in the musical Les Miserables: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” I never really understood that line until recently.
I have had very many people in my life, and a great deal of friends. Most of them are the results of shared interests or activities, like singing (or shared tribulations or trials, like Sunday school class). I speak to them only about that one shared activity, and rarely delve into other matters. After the class ends, when the show is over, once we lose interest in that particular TV show…the relationship slowly dies. Most of my friendships have been like that. Short-term, happy friendships, that do not hurt too badly when severed - I can always find another.
But then there are those few –so very few, but one never minds the number. Like W, and sometimes D, and especially M. People with whom you have formed a special bond that goes beyond shared interests and shared time.
I hardly ever see or speak with W anymore, but when we do, it is as old friends do – about anything and everything. Somehow the time lapse between conversations doesn’t seem to make a difference. We disagree on quite a few subjects, but we have an understanding between us – we can agree to disagree, as long as we can agree to understand one another.
D cares about me too much to allow me to disagree with him unchallenged. Although we never see one another in person any longer, he and I share both a passion for music and a passion for truth – it is not simply a shared interest, but a character trait. My relationship with D exists on a deeper level than with W, because we can relate to one another on a spiritual plane – we share certain beliefs, and there are some that he has that I do not share, and vice versa. And because this is important to the both of us, we spend much of our time together debating our differing beliefs. But we do not see each other as enemies – rather, we are closer because of our disagreements. Each of us wants to convince the other not for bragging rights or because of pride, but because we care about each other too deeply to let one of us fall behind in our searching for truth.
A side note: D is often the one who is leading me forward, and I am usually the one falling behind. Thus, our relationship is uneven – he is the older brother, and I the younger sister. But both of us know that in God’s eyes we are equals, and so both of us will pray for one another, offer spiritual encouragement, and ask for prayer when we need it, without embarrassment.
I will mention P briefly, although he is not one of my closest friends, because he in some ways is similar to D. P and I share a common interest in writing, which is how we came to know one another, through co-writing stories. Doing so forces you, in a way, to share part of your soul with someone – by revealing your characters to him, you reveal part your own character. And this mutual knowledge of one another, I believe, may lead to what people call a “close” friendship.
Which leads me to M. M must be put in a completely different category than all the rest, and he is one of the reasons why I believe that mutual knowledge may be a key component to a close friendship. Somewhere early on in our relationship, we made a pact never to hide anything from one another – I’m not sure if it was a solid pact, or simply an unspoken understanding between the two of us. I nearly broke the pact once, but to my knowledge, following it has never led either of us to any shame or hurt. In fact, knowing the faults and hurts of one another has only made us more able to sympathize with one another – in a sense, I love him more because of how broken he is.
I’m not sure how that works, but it works nonetheless. We know and feel each other’s pain and joys, likes and dislikes, loves and hates. I often know what he is going to say before he says it. But never do I grow bored of talking to him, even when I do know. In fact, knowing him well only makes me want to know even more. The more we converse, the more we hunger for conversation.
It’s like a drug, come to think of it.
(M and I have both been told that such a relationship is too close for a boy and a girl who are not a couple. However, at a time where romantic relationships are taken so casually, that is hardly a major feat.)
Never have I known someone so closely, or shared with someone so openly. And part of that is because when we are with each other, we know we are not being judged. I accept him the way he is, the beautiful and the broken both, and know that he is doing the same. This knowledge that the person at the other end of the conversation is not judging you, but simply accepting and loving you is immensely freeing.
It is false that we accept each other because we are very similar. True, M and I have our similarities, but we are also very different on many levels. M has gone through much more, and has much more experience than I have – compared to him, my life is extremely sheltered. I have certain skills and interests that he does not share, and he has his own skills and interests of a completely different nature that I lack entirely. And it puzzles me, why this does not drive us apart. We do not try to hide our diverse interests from one another when we speak – in fact, we are completely open with one another concerning our diverging interests and pasts. Our differences do not cause us to judge one another, either.
You are free to be yourself, as broken and messed up as you are, and yet simply being with this person who is not judging you makes you want to be something better than just yourself. You want to make yourself better and more whole, for his sake and for yours, because you know that he sees the best in you, and wants the best for you. It feels rather ridiculous to say that being with someone makes you want to be a better person, but it is true.
And that is another aspect of love that is interesting (notice how I went from talking about close friendships to talking of love, for truly, where lies the difference?). Knowing that someone loves you causes you to love yourself a little more as well – not in a selfish sense, but in a self-appreciative sense. M once told me I was beautiful, to which I responded with various evasions and awkward sentences. After that conversation, my face was still the same. No physical aspect of me had changed. But I began to see myself as beautiful – not as a hopeless mess, but as something worth polishing up a bit and smiling for the camera. Knowing that someone thinks you worthy of love, and says so, makes you feel lovely, for lack of a better word.
I have a memory of when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I and my family had been staying in Taiwan for two weeks, with some friends who lived in a narrow building with four floors and an open area on the roof that served as a place to dry laundry, enjoy the rare cool breeze, or just chill. I went out there early one morning, just as the sun started to come up, to have some prayer and alone time with God. Back at home in the U.S., my youth group leader had told us that each of us needed to find an accountability partner, someone with whom we could share everything, someone who would help us and whom we could help in our walks with God. And I remember asking God – many times, in different ways, for at least fifteen minutes – to find me such a person. Up ‘til then, I had never had a very close friend, and at that point, after two weeks in a country that spoke a completely different language than the one I was used to, I was lonely. And I remember, after about half an hour of sitting out there in the cold (yes, it is cold in Taiwan sometimes), waiting for God knows what, this tiny bird came and sat out on one of the laundry lines.
To this day I have never discovered the species of the bird, but I like to think it was a sparrow. Because when I saw it, I recalled: “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” And I felt a sense or reassurance at that moment (corny, I know, but it’s true).
And I realized just now, as I was writing, that my prayer from so long ago was answered, in more ways than one.