I had lunch with my oldest friend last week. He and I walked beside each other (even rooming together during 4th year) throughout (the majority of) architecture school at Mississippi State University. Today, we're both 54 years young, having graduated together (w/ +/-40 others) in 1995.
My oldest friend was my best man in my wedding and I his. Though we don't see each other often (I don't care for his wife), we do make a point to lunch 2-4 times a year in order to catch up. Thankfully, this is made easy due to the fact that his office is just a mile or so from my own.
He and I are both blessed to be fathers. My friend has two children, one of which is a son. And this boy is floundering as a young man (he's 20-years old), and the major causation is his isolation (zero face-to-face friends). No doubt, my old friend divulged this during lunch last week. Hence, I've been thinking a lot about this travesty whilst reminiscencing about our times "back in the day" supporting each other. For this boy lives a life of privilege within the richest most opportunistic culture on planet Earth, yet his life / future is in the ditch in light of his stark aloneness.
Obviously, online video games didn't exist when my old friend and I were 20 years old. The absence of the Internet fortified that truth. We did wear headphones, though there was no need for microphones to be integrated therein. And those headphones were used mostly to listen to compact discs (remember the Discman?) or cassette tapes (Yay for the Walkman!).
My friend's son claims that he DOES HAVE FRIENDS. There just online...
Please.
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Yesterday, there was a tiny crazy woman at the Y. She was meandering around the gym floor talking and coughing (gagging?) aimlessly to herself whilst sporting her Spandex. Initially, I assumed she had those ridiculous earpads in, and via the miracle of cellular / Wi-Fi was chatting to whomever, but I was wrong. Instead, she was simply having an imaginary conversation with her broken brain as she wove in and out of the machines irrationally.
& this wasn't the first time I'd seen her there doing this crazy act.
(You never know what you'll encounter at the Y.)
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The building adjacent to our office building houses one of the few children's allergy clinics within central MS. I took note today (again) of a handful of female staff members (no less dressed in their blue scrubs) using the very edge of the ground transformer concrete pad (located covertly at the rearmost corner of the building) as their butt perch to light up together.
I'm not one to advocate smoking, but you have to admit, particularly within this digital day and age, that if nicotine / tobacco brings people into healthy platonic community, so be it.
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Not long after my first encounter with my old friend (summer of '90), it didn't take me long to adjudicate the fact that both honesty and reliability were his watchwords. Plus, he wasn't one to criticize or gossip (at least to me). I liked all of these traits despite the fact that he'd no doubt (at the outset of our friendship) had fallen out of the ugly tree (& hit a few branches on his way down). Oh, my goodness, you should have seen this kid's driver's license photo!
Keep in mind that I was by no means - a looker - at age 19-20 either, but this poor South MS kid had it really, really rough in the looks department.
Overall, in spite of our very different (suburban vs rural) upbringings, we just fit well together. And recognizing our need for community (& my pity response), us two architecture students naturally joined forces platonically. It was as simple as that.
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Perhaps because I'm an only child, finding solid friends has always been a priority.
Never would I have endured architecture school then working within the cutthroat architecture field sans close, personal friends like Jason. I feel certain I'd be right there with that crazy woman at the Y.
I'm afraid Jason's son situation isn't looking so healthy going forward. That makes me very sad. For I know firsthand exactly what he's missing out on via genuine platonic community.
If you're young, and wise enough, use your need for recovery as an excuse to, first & foremost, make lifelong friends via Samson Society. And even if there're not face-to-face / in-person, attending meetings / after-meetings fosters the relationships that you absolutely were designed by God to have!
Thanks be to God for Samson Society!