To be a friend

Last Friday, Kevin and I put our kids to bed and then headed off to the temple. We were going because it had been a little while, but we were also going to decide for sure about Kevin's postdoc.

To tell the truth, I've known in my heart for a long time that we were going to move, so I wasn't going to ask about that. Instead, I went with this question: "What more do we need to do in Ann Arbor?"

I wasn't expecting a big, life-changing answer -- for instance, it's hard to start a nonprofit in just three months. And I didn't really get one. Instead, the impression that has stuck with me is to "be a friend."

Although that should be an obvious thing to do, in some ways it was sort of hard to do this week. Kevin had a paper due today that he didn't have all the theory worked out for, so he spent most of the week working on it til past 1 or 2 in the morning. It usually took John somewhere between 1-3 hours to actually fall asleep for naps once he showed signs of being tired (although driving sped up the process exponentially), and he averaged about 40 minutes of napping each day. Jim was mostly fine, but there were plenty of meltdowns. And so on.

And on top of that came the instruction to "be a friend."

I had two types of experiences with that each week. One was to be friendly to people I hadn't met before, and the other was to be a friend to friends I already know.

For the past little while, I've generally been able to breeze through week after week without having to talk to people I don't know. Every now and then someone new moves in, but for the most part I've just been able to talk to people I already know. But this week was different. I counted 8 different instances involving more than a dozen people I didn't know where the only polite thing to do was to talk to them.

Some people thrive on that. I've had times where I've thrived on that (freshman year of college, for example). But this week was definitely not one of those times. It felt like someone threw a backpack on me, dumped it full of rocks and said, "Here. Go climb a mountain." Or more accurately, it's like someone squirted an entire tube of toothpaste in my mouth and said, "Go say something intelligent now." Then there was the time there was an intentional language barrier thrown in, and I felt so dense I couldn't even understand what my friend speaking perfect English was saying.

Sure, you can always talk about the weather and where people are from, but once you've belabored that it can be exhausting to think about what to talk about next. Even with all the practice I had this week, each time filled me with trepidation. When Kevin said, "Maybe you can view it as a service," that made it even worse! Service should be fixing up yards and bringing meals. It shouldn't be doing people a favor by gracing them with your glorious presence and making conversation with them. If I thought of conversation as service, then it would become a chore more tedious than weeding or sweeping the front porch.

Well, I thought, this doesn't bode well for our upcoming move to a place where I know absolutely no one! Is this what it means to "be a friend?"

Luckily, I also had lots of conversations with most of my close friends. These conversations were not stilted and awkward. There were inside jokes and allusions to experiences together. We already knew what was going on in each other's lives. I don't think I ever did anything to serve them such as watching kids or making treats, so did I fail that aspect of "be a friend"?

I don't think so. True, I never actively served them, but I think it's actually a good thing that it didn't feel like service to talk to them! And therein was my epiphany of the week. There are really only two ways to see people -- as an object or a friend. Even if you try to put a positive spin on it by thinking of them as "someone to serve," then they are still objects in your mind. And it's really, really tiring to keep on giving to objects.

The tricky thing for me is that I feel like in order to transform someone from an object to a friend in my mind is to need them. It's when I feel like I need them in my life -- whether to text me Parent Trap quotes or discuss literature or laugh at my jokes -- that I'm willing to open up my heart and change them from project to friend.

But that's not what friendship is about, either! Friendships based on "what can I get from them" seem pretty mercenary, to be honest. But friendships without at least a bit of quid pro quo seem exploitative and exhausting. So what are we supposed to do?

I guess the most wisdom I've gained from this is from listening to Charlotte's Web in the car the past few weeks. I've read the book multiple times, but man, listening to E. B. White read it himself in his delightfully old-fashioned accent is incredible. It's also been surprisingly emotional for me. When I think of sweet, innocent Wilbur, basking in the love of Fern and Charlotte without doing a thing to deserve it, I almost get teary-eyed right there in the car. They just love him because they want to love him, and that makes him worthy of their love.

And perhaps that is the answer. Perhaps we will find out we need people when we love them first. Perhaps we will discover they are fun and friendly and witty and dependable when we see them that way. I know that's been the case this week . . . I've somehow been blessed to hang out with people who see me as kind, so I've had to live up to it even though I've wanted to be grumpy. Did I deserve to be seen so positively? Hardly. Have I been changed by it? Yes, even if a bit begrudgingly. (Kevin's heard plenty of grumbling.)

So, I guess the command to "be a friend" isn't about having a litany of well-placed conversation starters with the grandma at the park or even about fulfilling every need a friend might have. I guess it's more about having an outlook of love so that we don't see people as objects that we have to converse with or serve but rather children of God who deserve respect.

I guess it's time to move to a new city so I can practice this more.

(All this said, I still think I want to hunker down and not talk to anyone except Kevin for a few days. And that's probably okay, right?)