Can You Hear Me Now

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

Oprah Winfrey

I have made a lot of mistakes over the years, but the biggest may have been to not build and foster long term friendships. For years I said I was too busy being a parent or working a job. Truth be told, I was too lazy to look beyond the excuses I surrounded myself with. Maintaining friendships takes work and I chose to not put in the effort. It was too easy to keep my distance and pretend that I was doing just fine.

I had lots of transactional relationships, but very few people I could be open and vulnerable with. I knew who to call on when I had a programming problem or wanted to complain about a new company policy, but I didn’t have anyone to lean into when I struggled with my marriage, children, family of origin, or any number of life’s stumbling blocks. I was alone in a very crowded room.

Sadly, this is the case for many men my age. We grew up in a time when “success” (e.g. money, title, possessions, etc.) was valued above human connection. We were instilled with a work ethic that prioritized sacrifice over self care. Now, with our career days behind us, we struggle to build meaningful bonds with other men. We feel the need for non-transactional friends, but lack the necessary skills to bring new people into our lives.

Platonic

Are you familiar with the Dr. Marisa Franco’s book, Platonic? Dr. Franco writes about the myths of friendship, how to forge lasting connections, and navigating inevitable conflict. She states:

“We choose our friends, which allows us to surround ourselves with people who root for us, get us, and delight in our joy. There’s no looming vow, formal ritual, or genetic similarity to retain us in friendships’ open palms. Through friendship, we can self-select into some of the most affirming, safe, and sacred relationships of our lives, not because of pressures from society to do so, but because we elect to do so…The electiveness of friendship, coupled with its usual absence of romantic love, means that in friendship, we are free to choose relationships based on pure compatibility.”

As I approached retirement, I felt the need to find and cultivate friends who were willing to be a part of my new and somewhat scary adventure. I read the words of Dr. Franco and wanted my own tribe of people willing to root for me as much as I rooted for them. I wanted the kinds of friends I had before adulthood and all its responsibilities took hold of my life.

My search led me to rejoin the Unitarian Universalist church I attended when my children were young. Once there, I started attending various men’s groups and began volunteering in the kitchen. Almost immediately, I was rewarded with connection, conversation, purpose, and a real sense of belonging. While some of these friendships are of a transactional nature, many are not. Over time, I hope that a few of the transactional ones will head in a more nurturing direction. That will require work on both sides, but it’s good work.

Here I am at the ripe age of 66 rediscovering the joy I haven’t felt since my grade school, high school, and college days. Not only am I finding people I can “hang with,” I am deepening my life with meaningful conversation and connection by letting my guard down and opening up in ways I never thought possible. We have fun, listen respectfully, be ourselves, speak our truths, challenge each other, learn, laugh, and have become shoulders to lean on in hard times. Good friends are teaching me to be honest, humble, and fully engaged in life.

It took me a long time to get to this place, but it feels like home and home is best with a friend or two.

I will close with the words of Elton John’s best lyricist, Bernie Taupin. From their song “Friends“:

Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the light
If your friends are there then everything’s all right

Thank you for reading.

To growl with
howl with
to roll around in the dirt with
to laugh with, to cry with
to tackle trouble and pain with

Rumbling and roaring
coaxing and pushing on
capable shoulders when the going gets tough

To stand with
and to fall with
to lie on the grass and gaze into the heavens with

Today and tomorrow
until life’s final breath
everyone needs someone to bark with