I think most people would answer yes to this question. My own justification for answering in the affirmative goes like this: I stay in touch often enough with my closest friends; I do my best to lend an ear when a friend needs me; I give them hugs when I see them. I’m starting to rethink my answer.
I recently watched a conversation with Simon Sinek, a famous American author and inspirational speaker on business leadership. The conversation – much to my surprise – was all about friendship. Why is a man who is being paid very large sums of money by multinational corporations speaking on this topic? Generally, the topics are business related. It intrigued me.
In speaking about the standard norms of what friendship means in our tech-driven society, he asked the audience, “Do you pick up the phone on your friend’s birthday? Or do you just go on social media and let technology tick the box for you?” Oh dear. Guilty as charged. I quickly remind myself: I do call a handful of close friends, even if they’re far away. That makes me feel a little better, but not much. Why don’t I do this for all my friends?
Mr Sinek elaborated that friendship in our society has not been seen as “sacrifice-worthy” for a very long time. Many people don’t generally give up something for friends; rather, we tend to often take the friendship for granted and reschedule that lunch date because of an urgent meeting that just came up, a pressing deadline we have, or we’re just not in the mood. Valid point. Having come from the US business world, I am also guilty of this. I can’t say if this is accurate in New Zealand business circles, but I expect it is. The message is: we need to start prioritising friendships. Otherwise, we risk a lot. That friend that is in pain may not pick up that phone to speak with you when they need you, thinking “they’re too busy.” We’ve conditioned some of our friends to believe that we are only available sometimes, and perhaps on our terms.
What about our friends that we lean on? Do we lean in enough on them when we need them? Or have we also conditioned them that when we are struggling with some life issue, they will think “I’m sure they are fine.” (I detest that word fine! It’s used way to often when we are not fine.) What I’m realizing is that we have a very real responsibility to be authentic with our friends and colleagues. Granted, we are closer to some more than others, that’s understandable. But if those unique friends feel that way about us, we are doing ourselves a massive disservice, because we are saying, I don’t need you.
If you forget this article the minute you are done with it, so be it. But please, please remember this line from Mr Sinek: “We build trust by asking for help, not giving it.” That line knocked me over the head. All those times I didn’t lean on my friends when I needed them, I have decreased the trust between us, I’ve made a withdrawal from our friendship bank account. Mr Sinek, continued: “It’s an absolute honour to be there for a friend when they need you.” He is so right. I feel terrible when I hear about a close friend having struggled with something in the past and realizing they didn’t call me. That could be on me.
This behaviour might be partly due to how romantic relationships have changed in the past 50 years. Often, we want our partner to be everything for us. This modification in expectations grew out of a more independent family life in society. Instead of knowing all our neighbours in the community, we often live in our little homes, go about our business and our only interaction with our neighbours might be a wave hello when picking up the paper or taking out the trash. Fortunately, I see less of this in Whitianga. But I am very familiar with this in the California suburbs I lived in – people were just too busy. It took great effort to get to know the neighbours we had, but I’m glad we did.
Regardless of where you are on the spectrum of friendship, my hope is that this will serve as a reminder that we can all be better friends and are more likely to be called when a friend is in need.
info@truer-life-coaching.com.
www.linkedin.com/in/anandalaberge.
My website is coming shortly.
