Five Guys (Friends not Fries)

I’m not a big breakfast eater, but Friday morning I drove 20 miles to sit down and eat some pancakes. Although they were delicious, it wasn’t about the pancakes – it was about the company.  But before I talk about breakfast, let me tell the backstory of the friendships.

When I completed High School, there was a small window of opportunity for things to happen before I entered the mission field. I had to wait an entire year before I turned 19. (For those of you who didn’t know, back in the olden days, 19 was the age of eligibility for missionaries.) I had two summers and a school year to kill before I could report.

Off to BYU I went, excited to meet new people, and experience life as a grown-up. (Or as close to being a grown-up as a dorm-living Freshman, still completely dependent on his parents can be.)

Let’s just say that my first roommate and I were very different people, and no bonds of brotherhood were forged. It is best left for another story, but my new roomie and I didn’t spend a lot of time together. I blame myself: I was too immature to share the glory that was the Saturday NIght Fever soundtrack with him 3-4 hours per day, seven days a week. But I digress…

The resultant bright side of Staying Alive on a loop was that it forced me out of my dorm room. It was there in the since demolished halls of Deseret Towers that I met some of the best friends I have ever made. Their friends became my friends, and those friendships still exist today – which reminds me of a quote by Alexander Smith:

“You can go through life and make new friends every year – every month practically – but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.”

The breakfast “summit” was a reunion of five of us that have been friends for more than 34 years, and for the other four even longer. It happened that we were all in the same place, at the same time, and all available – which doesn’t happen very often. Decades perhaps.

We sat around the table for almost 3 hours and talked, listened, and laughed. It felt “important” to me at the time, and feels even more important now as I reflect on it. Remember when Ammon and his buddies reunited after serving their missions? (Alma 26) It felt kind of like that – not that we had converted thousands and had our lives miraculously spared – but there was rejoicing.

Somehow, the five of us have survived life as we know it. What do I mean by “survived?” We are all still alive. We are all still married to the same women we started out with. (Three of us married our wives within a 6 week span) We are all still strong in the Church. And finally, we are all happy. (Sadly, those four items constitute a very high bar in today’s world.)

In 1980, we would have sat around and discussed music, girls, Monty Python and laughed a lot. Instead, we talked about our families, work, society’s ills, our kids serving missions, our careers, and callings. (Oddly 3/5 of us are currently teaching Gospel Doctrine, and 3/5 of us have served as bishops.) We talked about the gospel, serving the youth, and other important topics – and still managed to laugh a lot. It was decidedly more grown-up, but felt as natural and comfortable as it ever did.

I have always considered these friends to be some of the smartest, and funniest men that I have ever known, and that still holds true after three decades. The conversation was never at a lull, and was never lacking for opinions. And the depth of the collective experience was astonishing.

We parted ways, not really knowing when we would all get together again, but that is OK. We know that the second we do find ourselves together, the conversation will pick back up – as if it were the next day – even after decades.  And that is a sign of the friendships that endure.

Since then, the topic of “Friendship” has been on my mind, and there are a couple of points that I think are worth making. Remember, these are MY opinions, and your experience may be different. The reason for the disclaimer is that one of my opinions might put you back on your heels…

1) You don’t have to look very hard to find a meme or someone who will say something to the effect of “A real friend will accept you for what you are.”

Hogwash. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

I saw a quote that said “A friend will accept you warts and all.” 

But I say, “A friend might accept you warts and all, but a true friend will hold you down and apply the wart remover.”

Lo and behold, I stumbled across a very similar sentiment in the Gospel Doctrine manual in a quote by Marvin J. Ashton:

“Someone has said, ‘A friend is a person who is willing to take me the way I am.’ Accepting this as one definition of the word, may I quickly suggest that we are something less than a real friend if we leave a person the same way we find him. …

“Yes, a friend is a person who is willing to take me the way I am but who is willing and able to leave me better than he found me” (Link)

I have perfect confidence that if I ever choose to take a wrong path, any one of those four friends would gladly kick my backside and call me out. Gentleness not required or expected.  And I would do the same for them.

I think that too many “friends” are so worried about being perceived as meddling, or judgmental, that they will watch each other stroll to the edge of a moral cliff and fall off without so much as a warning. What kind of friendship is that?

2) The Latter-day Saint culture can make for lousy friends.  What? Let me explain by asking a few questions:

• Have you ever had a great friend that who suddenly became a stranger because a ward boundary line was moved, or a ward or stake was split?

• Have you ever made good friends with someone who you were serving with in a calling, only to see that friendship wane when your callings changed?

Personally, I can answer yes to both of those questions. Often our church-based friendships are temporary – the result of boundaries and callings. Some endure past those changes, but many do not.  They are fleeting friendships of convenience, or exposure, and are usually not forged in steel.

Please note that I said that this culture can make for lousy friends – but not always. There are times that those friendships endure, even without regular maintenance. It is something I can do a better job of paying attention to.

Along the same lines, there are friendship issues in our motivations for fellowshipping those who aren’t of our faith – but that deserves its own post.

 

One of the moire curious parts of reuniting with my friends is seeing how much I already knew about their lives, thanks to social media. I knew about their families, I had read their kid’s missionary lessons, I had seen recent pictures. With today’s social media, maintaining friendships and keeping them fresh can be easier than ever.

I am grateful for good friends that reach back into my youth. The friends that we choose when we are young can help make us, or break us.

If we can have a joyful reunion over pancakes, can you imagine what it could/should be like in the hereafter?

It is feeling like one of those “letter writing” kind of days…