"Brief Encounters & the Quality of Friendship"

        I went to a funeral the other day. A friend of mine lost his father. This friend is someone that I don't see as often as I would like to, but when I do see him there is this strong sense of fellowship. We had worked together at the Speedway Parks Department--one of the best jobs ever.
      His father was a good man. He was an artist, he had been a marine, he was a good father, a good grandfather, and a good husband. He lived well and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only person that had a deep sense of respect for him. His name was John and I can honestly say that I don't know that I've ever met or will ever meet anyone that I enjoyed talking with more than him. He had the gift of talking to you and making you feel like you were the only person in the world. I think I only had 6 to 10 extended conversations with John, but I will treasure each one and the imprint he left upon me.

     Ask yourself this, "How many people like 'John' have I known?" I'll bet you've known quite a few.  I have also been blessed with a good number of friends, but I want to distinguish between life-long friends and people like John.

      If you think about it, it's very difficult to define the quality of friendship. In the case of many friends the quantity of years and shared history both serve to define that friendship, but in the case of people like John it seems to me that quality is more of a factor.

     For me, the diversity of my brief encounters is far-ranging and eclectic. This is one of those topics that I could ramble on about for days, but for the sake of this blog I have chosen to focus on three areas:

   Mentors & Teachers/Coaches

      These are people that occupy our lives for just a brief amount of time. Teachers alone can have a huge influence. It's funny to me that at one time a school year, a semester or a grading period seemed to go on forever. After about 20 years of teaching and as I close in on the age of 50 it's clear that my youthful perception of time was slightly askew. Every thing is relative.

       Teachers and mentors are people that took the time to care and to see qualities in us that we either could not see or didnt' care about at the time. The ones that pushed us and challenged us. They dared us not to quit on ourselves and taught us to ignore our limitations. Their efforts taught us that the majority of challenges and barriers we would face were psychological.

         Sadly, some of them are no longer with us, but that is what characterizes a true mentor or teacher. Their impact resonates long after they step out of our lives and into somebody else's. If there is any immortality on Earth, it lies there.

    Kitchen Table Conversations

         There is a little overlap here as far as mentors go. The people I'm thinking of here are mostly parents of friends and relatives of friends. Honesty is what I remember most about the conversations I've had while sitting at someone's kitchen table or counter top.

          I can remember talks in which I was praised and chastised by people who cared enough to go beyond telling me not just what I wanted to hear, but they caringly and courageously  told me what I needed to hear. These were conversations that taught me about life and character. I learned ideas and concepts that have been so valuable that saying thanks is so woefully inadequate that I will have to settle for doing my best to "pay it forward."

   The Trappings of Youth & Nostalgia

       I think we have a tendency to maintain some friendly acquaintances because we forged  them when life was (or at least seemed) fairly simple. This is part of the benefit and the danger of facebook and other forms of social media. There are studies that suggest that 1 in 5 divorces can be attributed to some form of social media. I'm sorry to say that while I don't doubt that, I also think that a friendship or acquaintance from our younger days can still be treasured for whatever joy it gave us at that time. We should be grateful for those happy and romantic snapshots from our angst-ridden adolescence.

        It's okay to look back on those awkward days and remember the way that person could make you smile. We can think of those times, sans any pain or drama, and be grateful for the bittersweet experiences that we thought would bring our lives to a crashing halt. Another valuable life lesson I learned from my teen years was that, "life goes on."

       Teammates, classmates, and first dates all made my youth worthwhile. I still have many friends from those aspects of my life. People that I played sports with that were younger than me and older than me, the people that I met in my classes that I didn't know very well previously, and the girls that were nice enough to go to movies with me can all be numbered among my "brief encounters." I'm grateful for all of them.

          The following is an excerpt from a poem by W.H. Auden:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

     I would like to dedicate this blog to John Hodgin and all the other wonderful brief encounters of my life.



     In Memory of John