Friends

We have led rather peripatetic lives, have lived for periods of years in five different countries and for shorter periods in several others. So we have been to a great many interesting places and met lots of interesting people. Which may sound exciting, and it has been – it certainly hasn’t been boring – but there is a downside: we have left good friends all over the world, many of whom we hardly ever see, and some of whom we will undoubtedly never see again. I’ve written about friends before (blog of Nov. 2010); this piece has a different slant on the subject.

 Brian, here with our daughter Sue, goes back to university days

 

 

 

 

Diana and I met when we were students at a South African university, and some of the best friends we ever made are from that era, 50 years ago. We were conventional people of our time and married and had kids when we were quite young: among the most durable of our friends were those we made when the kids were little, which in our case was in South Africa, and then in Scotland. At that time of life groups of young mothers, dealing with small children and their activities, meet regularly. The progress and problems of kids are matters of consuming mutual interest and there’s a very good chance that strong friendships will develop. These lead to socializing that includes husbands; in some cases couples find themselves compatible, leading to family friendship. In our case there were also, of course, professional friends, although from a family point of view these were more likely to stay in the category of acquaintances than become family friends. We're still in touch with some of the friends from that time, although it was all more than 40 years ago, but since we moved on contact has generally been reduced to Christmas cards (now heading for history as the Christmas letter circulated by e-mail takes over) and the occasional e-mail.

We moved from Scotland to England and were there for ten years, covering the main period of the kids’ schooling. The patterns of social contacts changed as everyone got older, but we still made some good friends. Then we went to Australia and had to start again: new schools for the kids, a new social milieu, new activities and professional friends. We were many years in Canberra, long enough to put down quite strong roots – we felt we belonged and there was time for friends to become ‘old friends’. We hadn’t intended to move when it was retirement time, but we did. There were good reasons for it, but that’s another story and the move had all the usual consequences: try to keep in touch with the friends you left behind; make new friends, adapt to a new social environment.

Looking back on all this it’s inevitable that I think about what constitutes good friends; what’s the difference between them and the countless acquaintances who have come and gone over the years. A great deal has been written about what friendship means, and its importance. Without getting too involved in psychology and philosophising, I would say that the basic criteria of real friendship are interest in the other person, enjoying their company, being prepared to accept inconvenience  - or even make significant sacrifices - for them, if necessary. The list could obviously be expanded, discussed and elaborated. At its best friendship is a kind of love, and has many faces. 

Where we live now, we're in an era of acquaintances, of friendly people but few real friends, a time of polite social interaction at dinner parties where conversation is often banal and we start watching the time half way through the evening, wondering when we can politely leave; of community activities and gatherings of various sorts where we go through the motions, share food and a few drinks and go home. Friends at the golf club really don’t matter in any basic, visceral sense – they’re just acquaintances. We meet some good, generous and public spirited people who would not hesitate to help anyone who needed it, but whether we really connect with them in a way that matters emotionally is another matter. That gets harder as the years go by.

Sune, from Sweden, and Dick, from Oregon; our friends across 30 years

I suppose it’s a very different story for people who stay in one place virtually all their lives, part of a stable community, socializing in adulthood with people they have known since they were all children together. This must be conducive to comfortable relationships; where there is a long shared history there is no need to explain allusions to people and events of the past. (There is a darker side to this, of course, and that’s the persistence of old feuds, and possibly hatreds. There are advantages in being able to leave unpleasant people and events behind!) An interesting question is: is the situation of old-established, relaxed and comfortable companionship, with its lack of novelty, long history of shared experience and possible underlying tensions, much better than our situation?

Probably. Those who have lived all (or most) of their lives in one place have a much better sense of place and of belonging. They know the community they belong to; in fact they probably seldom if ever think about it. Life goes along in its accustomed rhythms, with the well-known faces around. Strangers can be ignored – in old and conservative communities strangers may be treated with suspicion: they don’t fit in. One of the disadvantages of the peripatetic lifestyle is the feeling of rootlessness, of not really belonging anywhere. We have met hundreds – possibly thousands – of interesting people over the years, in various places, and have made many good and interesting friends but (as I said earlier), we’ve left most of them behind. If we travel to see them, or they come here, their company is as good as ever, but the opportunities are limited. We have also met many people who are amiable and pleasant, whose company we have enjoyed, but who have never come to mean a great deal to us. 

Diana with Auro, who came from Brazil, a friend of 20 years

Bu the question that keeps coming up, for those who have lived in various places, is: “where do we belong?” The answer depends on more than friends, although they are very important. Do we ‘belong’ where we live now, or is this another temporary stop? Few of our important friends live here – or near here. I think it’s fairly general, in fact fundamental to most people, that their sense of where they belong is anchored in the place they grew up, in childhood friends and neighbours who knew them, and so on. In our case going back to where we originally came from, to live the rest of our lives there, is not an option. The communities we grew up with are gone, those we knew are dead or scattered across the world. The countries we grew up in – Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa – have changed beyond recognition. 

There's no point in whingeing about it, or feeling sorry for ourselves. A reality check is provided by thinking about the way refugees feel: we had options, none of which were bad, but, according to the UNHCR, there are currently about 16 million people in the world who are classed as refugees, fleeing violence, war and oppression, not to mention another 25 million so-called displaced persons. For most of them all the options were unpleasant. Every one of them would like to live in a safe and stable place, never mind where they grew up. For millions of children the growing up place is a squalid, crowded, camp. The implications are obvious and I could get seriously side-tracked here, but will leave it at that, just adding that the world’s exploding global human population is a significant factor among those causing all that misery.

And those who matter most - family.

Our wandering lifestyle has brought us great rewards and the friends we made were immensely valuable and remain valued. In periods when I feel down, I might wish that some things have been different, but they weren't. We made our choices and can only be grateful for the good things, and the good friends, we've had  - and still have, scattered across the world – and the good things that we have now.