Another Facebook letter

“A friendship that can end, never really began”
- Publilius Syrus (1st. century BC)

When one of my Facebook friends decided to leave Facebook, I wrote that one of the things I like about being here is that my Facebook friends post things that make me think. His reasons for leaving Facebook made me think. And just now I read something on another friend’s page that made me want to respond, but not in her post, not to her specific situation, because I don't really know her.

She starts with a quote from Buddha: “One who says ... ‘I am your friend’, but does not take upon himself any tasks he is capable of doing, is to be recognized as no friend.” which reminds me of a conversation I had earlier this week in real life –the other real life, but the one in which you sit on a couch opposite somebody with a glass of wine in your hand and you talk -.
We talked about the importancy of friendship, of having soulmates, of being able to call somebody at any moment of the day when in need of a listening ear. “I don’t know if I really have that many good friends”, my friend said and I wondered what that meant, a good friend, and thought of something I had read in Dag Hammerskjöld's book Waymarks, something about great friendship not being reciprocated.

In search of the quote I found a blogpost I had written while walking to the south of France last year, when every day I started by embroidering the name of the person that had asked me to walk with him on that day on the inside of my jacket. It was the 29th day of a 40 day walk and that day I was walking with two friends. They weren’t there in the flesh but we walked together symbolically, Cathy Turner by doing her own walk from Beacon Site to Beacon Site in the UK, Christian French by possibly thinking about me and if not by going through the day the way he does. The “walking theme” we had decided on was beacons. Beacons, because when I met Cathy for the first time she was working with beacons, moving through the Belgian landscape with a group of artists, carrying her beacons and contemplating her decisions on where to leave her beacons behind. Beacons because I had the feeling Christian might need one. Or maybe a beacon needed him. Anyway. On that day I collected odd materials for a beacon to send to Seattle where Christian would use it or decide on its non-use. I wrote a blogpost starting with:

“Some people I consider myself closer to than most of the people I call my friends didn't join me on my long walk. I don't mind. Friendship is never about obligations. And I figured I was walking with them anyway. Until I thought about it again today. And realised they might not be my walking partners after all. I think they are my beacons. They show me where to go.”

I wrote in the blog about the walk that day, about the materials I found along the road, about entering le Puy en Velay and realising that some beacons are behind you. How you might not even know that they are beacons until you look back where you came from. I ended with the quote from Hammerskjöld, not knowing if it made any sense:

"Perhaps a great friendship is never reciprocated. Perhaps, had it been warmed and protected by its counterpart in another, it could never have grown to maturity.
It “gives” us nothing. But in the space of its silence it leads us up to heights with wide insights."

Back to my Facebook friend and the Buddha quote. The reason why I didn’t comment on her post was because she is in a difficult situation, has been writing about it for the last days and she might be very right having decided that somebody who she called a friend isn’t really a friend according to the quote. It is a difficult thing though. How do you decide if somebody is capable of taking upon himself any tasks he is capable of doing? You can never crawl into somebody elses’ skin and feel. You can only try to imagine that by pretending you are your friend but it is your own judgement in the end. How influential are your expectations in that judgement? Your expectations of what a friendship should be about? Of what that particular friendship should be about?

I never lost friends in my life because they decided not to be my friends anymore. And some people did. Not good Facebook friends but real friends – real in another way, in the way in which you poor the two of you another glass of wine and talk about the movie you just saw together -, friends I spent amazing times with.
I don’t think that you can end a friendship from one side only. From both sides, maybe. Or because you went in different directions and the friendship faded away. But one-sided, no. People who went because my company wasn’t wanted, wished for, helpful anymore, are still my friends in the sense of being beacons. They show me where to go, they shed light on things, still. Now and then I bump into one of those friends and that is always wonderful and we say that we will stay in touch and then we don’t which maybe is what it is all about. But the feeling you have when you meet again, that is friendship. In its purest form.

I am not sure if it is the same thing Hammerskjöld is saying though. Or how it works with the Buddha quote.

Can a friendship be about having no obligations towards each other but also about taking upon himself any tasks he is capable of doing? Of course in the end it depends on how you define friendship. And we define it by trying to look at it from different angles. By trial and error sometimes. By calling people friends who aren’t really or stop calling somebody a friend who has never been more important in guiding you through life. By stopping being your own friend (which sounds a bit tacky, I know ........).

Anyway. I wasn’t planning to write this much, certainly not when it is supposed to be for Facebook but what the hell. My good Facebook friends will read it and the ones who don’t might also be very good Facebook friends. Maybe even better ones.