We don’t get to choose our family members, but we do get to choose our friends. And I have very few actual friends outside of family members, some of whom are both family and friends. It may be unusual, but my mother was my very best friend before her passing and I haven’t experienced that depth of friendship since her passing in 1994. It’s likely because of my personality. I’ve said many times that I am an introvert. At times I think I also have reclusive tendencies. If my mother worried about the many hours I spent as a child tucked away behind the big orange chair in her bedroom just thinking or the days I spent playing alone in my bedroom or in my grandparent’s attic, she never mentioned it to me. As I got older, I often shopped alone, visited museums alone, and even went to the movies alone because I wanted to. After her death, I’ve become my own best friend by choice.
However, I do like people. But the truth is that I can only enjoy people in small doses. Because of this, the quality of my rare interactions makes a huge difference to me. I hate drama, bickering, jealously, competition, and gossip. There was a short time in my life when I’d decided that boys made better friends than girls because there was less of this nonsense, and they didn’t appear to be so needy or clingy. Boys didn’t need constant affirmation about their looks and feelings. They weren’t constantly worried about who said or did whatever. But boys had other issues like their attraction to violence and that rubbed me the wrong way. They weren’t inclined toward meaningful conversations either, so that preference was short-lived.
Eventually, the few female friends I made in high school were athletes and academically inclined students like me and they didn’t gossip nor traffic in drama. They didn’t insist that I go shopping with them nor talk to them on the phone. Our interactions were not riddled in competition and insecurities. That positive experience lured me into believing that I could make and maintain positive female friendships so long as we had common goals. So, in college, I joined my two closest dorm friends and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. I soon learned that I loved the community service projects, but I dreaded the parties and the return to female drama.
I was never a shy person and I never lacked friendly human interactions. From the outside looking in, it probably seemed like I had lots of friends because I was well known and well liked. I am approachable because I smile and acknowledged everyone from a genuine place of welcome. To my surprise, I was actually voted “most outgoing” by my senior class. How that happened is a mystery to me because I never once attended a party in high school. I had a lot of “associates” and was I kind and friendly to everyone, but I only hung out with that small circle of friends, whom I saw at school and at youth group.
During my career, I was often told that I give off a warm and welcoming aura that attracts people to me. I genuinely do like most people, and I am welcoming because I feel deeply that most people are deserving of kindness, dignity and respect. However, I’ve always been really picky about people I become actual friends with. I am friendly with a lot of people, but friends with only a few. I realize that some people mistake my willingness to have genuine interactions with them as friendship when it is not.
I can name the few people whom I have called “friends” over the years. These people proved themselves to be incredible human beings whom I admired for their wisdom, empathy, loyalty, and generosity. They are my “go to” people and the people I will be there for in every situation. They are the only people in the world who can keep me on the telephone for more than five minutes.
There were times in my life when I mistakenly thought someone was friendship material. I’m a sucker for intelligence, confidence, and humor. But each time I’ve embarked on a friendship based on these attributes alone, I’ve been burned. I had to learn the hard way that not every smile is truly friendly and not every person who shows an interest in me has my best interest in mind. And then there was the time I joined my sorority after being taken in by the organizational goals and the intelligence, talents, and energy of the sorority members. After being initiated, I soon discovered that the community service at the college level was less important than parties and female drama. It proved way too much for me and I had to extricate myself. It took years for me to return to active membership and that was only because I finally learned how to preserve my sanity in the midst of a dynamic female environment.
There is a Bible Proverb that reads, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” It’s taken me years to finally understand that wisdom is the application of knowledge. It’s emotional intelligence. I want to be an emotionally intelligent person, so I must choose emotionally intelligent people as my companions.
Today, I have many associates but very few friends. But the friends I do have can discern between the truth and lies, are loyal and keep confidences, do not gossip about others, are genuinely supportive me and my family, are empathetic, kindhearted, and are not overly demanding of my presence because they too require time alone. They may not be the funniest people on the planet, but they definitely contribute to my own wise walk and not my ultimate destruction.