G'mony stole my punch line. That said, since I proposed this glorious topic, I figured I would share a bit about my success (and failures) at keeping one particular new years resolution.
When I was in graduate school, I made a resolution to be a better friend. I had fallen out of touch with my college classmates, lost touch with childhood friends, and only had a handful of people I
really thought I could turn times of need or crisis. Recognizing that this mentality of take it or leave it friendship was no way to go about creating and fostering a support system for my adult life, I vowed that year to make a two-fold new years resolution. First, I would be a better friend to my existing friends; and second, I would be an active participant in the academic and social community surrounding me in an effort to cultivate the new and potential friendships around me.
This two-fold resolution was both a success and a failure. In striving for the first goal, I created bench marks for myself- commit one hour each Sunday afternoon to calling and reconnecting with old friends. Screen fewer calls using call waiting, and instead pick up the phone
and chat, regardless of how busy/hungry/sleepy/or otherwise occupied I was. Send emails every few weeks, giving updates, or simply to let friends know I am thinking about them. Ask about life; inquire into their wellbeing; and, above all, listen. Listen intently.
I was very good for a little while at this. I reconnected, I laughed, I felt somehow more complete in my own life, having opened myself to others. But it was really only for a little while. . . the college friendships grew old and weary, and the emails seemed shallow, empty—the platitudes reflecting the aging process and the fact that where commonalities once stood, only distance and memory remain.
As to the second prong of my two-prong attack, I was able to succeed, for the first time in my life, at keeping a resolution. I took a step back from my preconceived notions of law school classmates and my aversion to the artificial realities and camaraderie of force small sections and decided to learn more about my classmates. Rather than identifying them by row or surname, I would learn to identify them by ambition in life, favorite beer, sports team allegiance, favorite past-time, hometown, or other identifying characteristics that had heretofore gone unnoticed in my narrow-minded attempt to treat school as a job. I stopped fighting the system, and embraced it. I was met with the warm embrace of a fantastically diverse group of 10-15 individuals whose friendships each played pivotal and crucial roles in carrying me through the 2.5 years of school remaining.
Sure, there were people in my section whose names I have already forgotten, and there are people who I don’t really care to remember, even though I do know their name. But there are also the people who touched me so deeply that I will be forever changed and forever better for the role they’ve had in my life. There are the girls who I once dubbed our section “cheerleaders,” who both turned out to be remarkable women. One, a southern belle whose opinions, intellectual curiosity, and tenacity, though initially off-putting, helped fuel and foster my own sense of self-worth as an attorney. Whose hypothetical questions and insane attention to detail during intense study sessions expanded my own legal intellect, and whose willing ear helped me through the most emotionally trying nine-month period of my life thus far. The other, a classy city chic whose self-depricating, yet elitist nature meld together into one fantastically loyal walking contradiction. As we’ve moved back north and left the steamy southern humidity behind us, she remains a steadfast friend. The kind who call out of the blue, simply because they were thinking of you. And when I’m behaving myself, I pick up and listen, and through the banter, I am reminded of the value of such friends. And then there were the gentlemen. The island jokester, the sophisticated I-banker, the fresh out of undergrad charmer, and the mysteriously enigmatic boy-next-door. Those four taught me more about myself in a three year span than almost any real friend before me, save the one I will marry. They taught me to laugh, to take myself less seriously, to let go of myself, to relax. They taught me to appreciate the joy of skipping class to sit by the pool, and the fear of avoiding wild dogs crossing the highway. They taught me that the best beer to hold green food coloring is miller high life, how to smoke a cigar, how to lose at black jack, and how to love platonically. Finally, there was the intellectual, future professor and my dear, thick-skinned Detroit-born buddy more opinionated still than any of the aforementioned gunners.
This motley crew is now spread across the country; and I find myself this New Years, realizing that I really ought to return to the first prong of my attack, and make the same goal once again. The failure part of my story is that my efforts at writing, at calling, and email have long since subsided back to dismal, pre-resolution levels. I wake, work, run, eat, and sleep in a relatively tunnel-visioned state in which picking up the phone to call even my dearest, most important friends must be mentally scheduled. And I screen phone calls. Often. I have lost touch with college classmates, and grown apart from all but a handful of highschool friends, and, with the exception of one, I speak only once a month, if that, to each of the above mentioned once-familiar faces. In an effort to prove to myself that these friendships, unlike some of those formed in college dorm rooms, have the strength to endure into adulthood. Perhaps it is the nature of life that we meet folks who will mold and shape who we become, and only a handful will remain our friends into the future. But as I sit here opining to the bloggosphere, I am resolving to put off that process for at least one year, and try, once again, to be a better friend. Because even if I know it would be unrealistic to tell each of these remarkable individuals how much they meant and continue to mean to me every day, I will be certain to send them my hellos more than merely once in a while. And I resolve not only call, but to listen. Listen intently.
