Friends 

Ron Sala 

 

Those of us who are Unitarian Universalists may have seen a list of famous people associated with our faith.

On that list are five Presidents, many great authors, social reformers, and humanitarians—Emerson, Thoreau, Florence Nightingale, Alexander Graham Bell, just to name a few. Perhaps the name I most enjoy seeing on that list, though, belongs to Twilight Zone originator Rod Serling. Besides being a lot of fun, the Twilight Zone TV series gets us to think about the “what if’s.” What if a ventriloquist’s dummy had a mind of its own? What if a lonely man fell in love with a robot? What if there existed a planet where beauty was ugliness and ugliness beauty?

One of the most disturbing of those “what if’s” from the Twilight Zone comes from the very first episode. A man finds himself in a typical American town. He walks the streets. They’re deserted. He walks into the businesses. There’s no one there. The more he searches, the more frantic he becomes. In the midst of an entire town, he is completely alone. The loneliness is too much for him and he breaks down.

It’s only at the end of the episode that we discover the truth. The man is not in a town at all, but in his own mind. He has been undergoing training to be an astronaut and has been in an isolation chamber for weeks. One scientist turns to another and explains that they can see to every need a person may have on a solitary space flight except one: the need for companionship. Try as they might, that’s one they haven’t licked.

As farfetched as the Twilight Zone might be, this science fiction has a strong basis in science fact. Scientists discovered during the last century that though it’s possible to see to the physical needs of infants solely with machines, without human contact they die.

And this need for touch, for belonging, and for connection with others doesn’t end when we’re children.

Leonard Syme, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley, indicates the importance of social ties and social support systems in relationship to mortality and disease rates. He points to Japan as being number one in the world with respect to health and then discusses the close social, cultural, and traditional ties in that country as the reason. He believes ... the more social ties, the better the health and the lower the death rate. Conversely, he indicates that the more isolated the person, the poorer the health and the higher the death rate. Social ties are good preventative medicine for physical problems and for mental-emotional-behavior problems.¹¹ 

Indeed, it may be that connections with others are an indicator of health comparable to diet and exercise.

But how often do we connect with our friends? I don’t think I’m alone when I find it difficult to get time to spend time with friends—between their busy schedules and mine. Seeing old friends is good for the soul as Bob Seeger sings, but not always easy to do.

We live in a competitive society, and sometimes getting ahead means falling behind with friends. And even those people we make time to socialize with—are they really friends? “Friend” is a word we use so easily in our culture. It can mean anything from someone you’d depend on no matter what to someone you’ve met once or twice and smile at.

This problem of having trustworthy people to share our lives with is one everyone has to face. But it’s tempting to think there are some people who don’t have to work at friendship. We see the rich and famous and think how wonderful it would be to be like them, to have so many friends. But the reality can be quite different.

Let me illustrate. One day, at a store in New York where I used to work, the phone rang. I answered it, and the person on the other end asked for one of my co-workers. I asked who was calling, and after a slight pause, the voice said Jody Watley. (Jody Watley, in case you don’t know is a popular singer). I relayed the name, though the voice didn’t match it, and handed over the phone. My co-worker looked a me quizzically, and took the phone. When she heard the voice, she laughed and went on talking with whoever it was. The voice sounded familiar to me, but it definitely wasn’t Jody Watley. It couldn’t be who I thought it was, could it? No, of course not. Not here.

When she got off the phone, my co-worker explained that it was, in fact, who I thought it was. Her trademark voice gave her away as a household-name television star, familiar to anyone of my generation. I was understandably shocked and impressed. I knew my co-worker was launching a singing career while she worked at the store. Nobody in New York is just one thing, after all. It seems just about everyone who works in a record store is an aspiring, actor, comedian, dancer, or minister. My co-worker had met the celebrity caller some years before in relation to her music and they had become good friends. I won’t say who the celebrity was, first to protect her privacy, and second that this story isn’t about celebrity, it’s about friendship.

My co-worker explained that one reason why she and the other woman are such good friends is that she doesn’t treat her like a celebrity. She told me how her friend was constantly surrounded by people, people who called themselves her friends, but were often just out to be seen with her or to get something from her. My co-worker enjoyed putting these people in their place by refusing to let them pressure her friend into picking up the check for dinner—even though a whole table of sycophants expected her to. Instead, these two related to one another as person to person and friend to friend with no special expectations just because one of them happens to be a celebrity.

I’d caught a glimpse of how lonely it could potentially be to be so well known and admired by the masses. Who were your real friends? Who were just fans and freeloaders? I reflected about how glad the woman must be to have such a friend as my co-worker.

But doesn’t she just want what all of us want?—someone to treat us as an equal and see us for who we are. Without that, how tragically close we are to the state of that poor man in the empty town in the Twilight Zone episode. We need each other.

Psychology Today once did a survey about what people want in friendship. They asked more than 40,000 Americans who said three qualities were most valued in a friend: 1) The ability to keep confidences. 2) Loyalty. And 3) Warmth and affection.² Let me repeat that: the ability to keep confidences, loyalty, and warmth and affection. How simple a list, yet how difficult to find people who adhere to it sometimes, or even to follow it ourselves.

Let’s look at each item in turn.

One, the ability to keep confidences. A cynic once said that you need at least two friends—one to talk to and one to talk about. But that’s not what anyone wants to be on the receiving end of, and it’s not what friendship is about. Instead, friendship is largely about a basic sense of trust. You want to know that the person you pour your heart out to is up to the task of keeping it for you. Aristotle asked himself, “What is a friend?” and concluded, a friend is “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Through our conversation, we can build up each other’s souls—or tear them down. The choice is ours.

Number two is close to number one. People want a friend to show loyalty. They want someone to journey with them, no matter if they’re up or down. Years back, Pepper Rodgers was having a terrible year as football coach at UCLA. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. Rogers recalls, “My dog was my only friend. I told my wife that a man needs at least two friends and she bought me another dog.”

That’s not friendship either. My mother used to tell me you don’t need to earn your friends, just be yourself. If yourself isn’t good enough, you have the wrong friends.

The greatest example we have of friendship from classical antiquity is the story of Damon and Pythias from the fourth century BCE. The Roman orator Cicero tells us Damon and Pythias were followers of the philosopher Pythagoras. If you want to know what loyalty in friendship is, people through the centuries have said, look at Damon and Pythias.

Damon, so the legend goes, was in trouble for criticizing Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. In fact, he had been sentenced to death for calling out against the king’s cruelty. Damon wanted to visit his family one last time before he died. The request was granted, on one condition—that someone would stay in prison to guarantee Damon’s return. If Damon should fail to show, that person would suffer the death penalty in his place. When Damon’s friend Pythias heard about his plight, he volunteered to be the hostage. So Pythias was locked in prison while Damon sailed away.

Now King Dionysius didn’t believe in friendship. He could see very clearly how wealth and power ruled the world, so wealth and power were his friends. But he was curious, so he visited Pythias in the jail.

Pythias told him that not only did his friendship with Damon lead him to volunteer to go to prison for him, but he was praying to the gods that they would delay Damon’s return. Then he would die and his friend be saved. The king was certain Damon would not come back and that Pythias had thrown away his life for a foolish and sentimental idea.

The fateful day arrived and Damon was nowhere to be found. Dionysius sat smugly on a wheeled throne drawn by six white horses. Before him stood a scaffold with Pythias atop it. Pythias, amazingly enough, was calm. He told the crowd that his prayers had been answered, and Damon had been delayed. He would arrive tomorrow after his own death had secured his safety. “If I could only erase your suspicions about Damon,” Pythias said, “I would go to my death as I would to my wedding. My friend will be found loyal. Even now, he is struggling toward Syracuse. Hangman, do your duty!”

Just then, a man burst in. His clothes were ragged and bloody. Though the face was dirty, Pythias immediately recognized the eyes of his friend. “You are safe, praise the gods!” cried Damon. “It seemed as though the fates were conspiring against us. My ship was wrecked in a storm, and then bandits attacked me on the road. But I refused to give up hope, and at last I’ve made it back in time. I am ready to receive my sentence of death.”

Pythias, however, was downcast. “What cruel haste,” he lamented. “How could you do the impossible? And yet, I won’t be disappointed. If I can’t die to save you, I don’t want to live.”

Even the cold heart of the tyrant could not help but melt at such a scene, each friend striving to die for the other. “Live, live!” he cried. “In all my life I’ve never seen a pair like you. I revoke the sentence. You have proven virtue and a God to reward it. Your example has taught me to seek out a sacred friendship such as yours.”

Few of us will ever have the opportunity to offer to die for our friends. But we all have the chance to live for them. Which brings us to our third and final part of friendship, warmth and affection. Somebody once said that the important thing in friendship is to keep your heart a little softer than your head. We all need someone to talk to and to feel accepted by. How many times have you picked up the phone knowing that a particular friend would help you pick up the broken pieces and help you to heal from some hurt in your life? Often, helping each other is something we do more with our ears than our hands. Maybe C.S. Lewis put it best when he said, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You, too? I thought I was the only one.’ ”

Back when I was a kid, I was often very lonely. I always hated the words, “painfully shy,” but they were words often applied to me. I was cautious around other people and found it hard making friends. I was frequently depressed and was no stranger to thoughts of suicide.

I belonged to no sports teams or after-school activities like other kids. But when I turned 14, I joined the youth group at my church. It was a Mennonite church, but this story isn’t about theology, it’s about friendship. I soon became friends with two other members, a boy and a girl. And through them I got to know the others. Finally, here was a place I belonged, where I felt the warmth and affection of my peers. By the time I left the group at 18, I had gone from a lonely, shy kid afraid of his own shadow to an outgoing, adventurous, and sociable young adult. In fact, my senior year I became president of the group. Though part of me will always be shy, the experience helped to teach me how to make friends. Not just companions, but real friends, committed to common values and developing moral integrity.

Real friendship does not exist in a vacuum. The great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, once wrote, “True friendship can only be made between true [persons].” “True friendship can only be made between true [persons].” Houses of worship can be a good place to make friends. That doesn’t mean that people who attend are perfect or even necessarily better than those who stay home. But there’s at least an indication, by one’s very presence, of a willingness to examine one’s life and a commitment to improve one’s character. None of us is at our destination yet, but a congregation is a good place to point ourselves in the right direction.

Indeed, we might see churches and synagogues as an extension of friendship. They are places designed to foster the keeping of confidences, of building loyalty with each other, and of showing warmth and affection to all.

In this vein, I will conclude with words of one of those Unitarian Universalist saints on our list, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson wrote, “God evidently does not intend us all to be rich, or powerful or great, but … does intend all of us to be friends.”

Amen.

¹ Martin & Diedre Bobgan, How To Counsel From Scripture, Moody Press, 1985, p. 18

¹ Martin & Diedre Bobgan, How To Counsel From Scripture, Moody Press, 1985, p. 18

² Psychology Today, June, 1982