Cultivating social networks, or deeper friendships?

I recently read another blog where the author shared, “I have been the understanding girlfriend, the accommodating wife, the forgiving sister and the easy-going friend.  I would make excuses like, 'Well, they are just a) busy b) stressed c) going through a rough time and/or d) in a weird place right now.'  And sometimes these things could have been true.  I would tell myself I needed to be less self-centered, egocentric or needy, which sounded healthy.  I’d go over what I didn’t do right.  I’d try to be THE better person and give them a pass.  I’d try to be a better person more worthy of their attentions and affections. After exhausting myself, I had to come to terms:  I had allowed myself to become 'the option person' in [their] life. ...we can’t make people make us a priority...”

When I read those words, I realized their truth. I have found myself there too often, and too recently. It's not an easy conclusion to draw, nor a comfortable place to be, but that doesn't end their veracity. So I decided to explore the Torah and other rabbinic sources for clues about friendship. Does it have anything that can speak to us today?

Rabbi Harold Kushner, one of the most well known and widely read contemporary rabbis of our time tells a story about what he learned of relationships. He says that one summer day he was sitting on a beach, watching two children building an elaborate castle together at water's edge. They had nearly completed it when a large wave came crashing in and reduced it to nothing, as ocean waves are wont to do. Rabbi Kushner expected the children to cry over this event, but they did not. He tells us that the children ran further up the shore away from the waves of the increasing tide, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another sand castle.

The lesson for us, says Rabbi Kushner, is that all the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand close to the edge of the ocean. Only our relationships to others will endure. In fact, it is those relationships where we are priorities to one another and not lopsided where one is more of an option, that will help us when the waves come along and knock us down.

Let's go back even further for wisdom. In Genesis, we read this from the story of Joseph as a young boy: "And a man found him, when he was wandering in the field, and the man asked him, 'What are you seeking?' And he said, 'I am seeking my brothers'" (Genesis 37:15).

I have moved more times in my life than most people could even fathom (60+ before I lost count). For most of my adult life, I have felt I was searching for friends and family, because moving that often disrupted friendships, and my family was a piece of work and then some. I spent most of my adult life looking for a place to belong in my heart, seeking friendships and relationships that were deep and meaningful, and yes, in a way, to replace the family relationships I never had.

While my situation might have been extreme, to some degree, we are all wandering about in search of our heart and soul “sisters and brothers,” while sometimes not realizing we are seeking. And finding such relationships is even more challenging in these times.

At a time when church and organized groups and religious affiliations and memberships are on a rapid decline, families become more remote geographically, and neighbor and work and other interactions become more superficial, we hear increasingly more talk about social networks. We make jokes about FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and myriads of other "social networking" sites. Our children are growing into adults who think making a friend and deciding to unfriend a person takes the nanosecond required to push a button and unfriend or unfollow someone. And conversely, they are left with the impression that reading someone's blogs or blurbs on social media could be a real friendship.

Yet we are left asking ourselves, "What happened to relationships? What are we teaching our children who have learned that a fast blurb on social media to hundreds of social network 'friends' is the end all and be all of real relationships?" True friendship is on the decline. Five years ago Cornell University sociologists found that adults have only two friends they can discuss “important matters” with—down from three in 1985. Half of those surveyed said they had only one, and 4 percent had none. Also five years ago Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz noted that "more people than ever before in this country are living alone. In major U.S. cities, 40 percent of households contain a single occupant. In Manhattan and Washington, D.C., nearly 50 percent of homes consist of one person. Singles are marrying later, divorce is on the rise, and more individuals prefer to live in privacy than within a community. Increasingly, we live alone in a lonely society." And that was five years ago! The statistics are even worse today.

Without deeper friendships, how can we know ourselves? Where are the mirrors that reflect back to us who we are and how we are acting? Do we have adequate self-knowledge and awareness of our blind spots? Not having more deeply meaningful friendships increases arrogance, and reduces our capacity for compassion. When we fail to cultivate friendships, we fail to cultivate ourselves.

With deeper friendships and more loving and involved familial relationships, including those beyond a tight nuclear family, we learn to be vulnerable, to make mistakes, and we find that we are still loved unconditionally and accepted as a human who often stumbles and makes mistakes while learning to walk. In them, we find comfort, and companionship, and our moral compass. We are strengthened, and our lives made so much richer for it. All for the trade off of some of our precious time, attention, and intention. When we make room for this holy space between two souls to share more deeply, the benefits more than make up for the "loss" of time. This kind of relationship can never be optional. We delude ourselves if we think we simply don't have that kind of time. When we don't have time for this, we are simply too busy or have our priorities screwed up.

In Aramaic, the word for friendship is chavruta, and it means more than just an acquaintance or someone you know fairly well. In fact, a pair of chavruta is the primary model of Jewish learning. A chavruta, in its truest sense, is a challenger: not one who merely supports, but also challenges. The Talmud, in Ta'anit 7a, teaches that in spiritual development, a friend is even more important than a teacher: "I have learned much from my teachers, but from my friends more than my teachers." A friend, on the highest level, is primarily a learning partner, a partner in life. Yet, how often do we find this in our current social lives? And if one is fortunate enough to find it, would we make the choice to tend to it, to make it a priority, given everything else going on in our busy lives?

Yet, it is through deep I-Thou dialogical relationships that we engage in our deepest learning and deepest soul development. In reciprocal transformation, we come to love one another, and our identities become intertwined at the soul level. And one thing our world is in desperate need of is this level of soul connection.

While friendship has a crucial role in child development, it does not lose its significance in adulthood! Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed, reminds us that “[one] requires friends all [their] lifetime”. It is the strong advice of the rabbis to "acquire for yourself a friend" (Ethics of the Fathers 1:6). Like any other moral effort, it does not come naturally but requires deliberation and effort. It requires making time and not letting it become optional. It requires attention and intention.

We look again to our Bible for words of wisdom when it comes to friends. In the case of Job, a problematic book for many, we find that Job was restored to fullness of life and even more than he had before he was severely afflicted, when? “And the Lord returned the fortunes of Job, when he prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10) When Job gave his friends, who were sitting there beside him during his trials and afflictions, the time, attention, and the intention of his prayers When he looked outside of himself and saw that even though his children and wife had died and he was alone, he was not without people who cared for him on a soul level. Maybe their advice had not resonated for him during his trials, but the fact that they never left his side and were deeply concerned for him speaks profoundly to the deeper message of the story of Job.

According to one Talmudic story, Honi, the legendary miracle-worker, was depressed from social isolation. He prayed for death that he might be released from his despair. Rava, a great Talmudic sage of the 4^th century, then utters tersely that one must choose “either friendship or death” (Ta’anit 23a). The lesson her for us is that we cannot thrive in our life missions without deeply meaningful companionship. And not just marriage partners, as deeply connected to us as they might be. 

While social friendships, say game groups or hiking buddies or running friends or even knitting groups, since I am a person who is very fond of knitting, are all good things, the kind of friendship I am addressing today goes much deeper. As it says in the Pirkei Avot, “Any love that is dependent upon a specific cause, when the cause is gone, the love is gone; but if it does not depend on a specific cause, it will never cease”. Friendships of pleasure and utility are fun, but end as our needs and wants evolve, or when our lives shift, or when we are too busy.

As Ecclesiastes teaches: "Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up their friend; but woe to one that is alone when they fall, for they have not another to help them up" (4:9-10).

I know a minister who has neglected the needs of a once-thriving community, who is unwilling to face the reality and accept the responsibility of their neglect. They have excuses. They have ruled with an iron fist by intimidation. They claim to have "a ministry on FaceBook" that is "oh so critical." And yet, in two short years they have let a 100+ member congregation dwindle to 35, because they have been unwilling to meet the needs of that community rather than push their own limited agenda. They have been unwilling to sit at the table and have the conversation about what the community needed and wanted. I know personally than when direct attempts were made to have these conversations early on, the minister could only argue that they were right and not even listen to the congregants. And today their arrogance is so great that few members even want to be around when they preach on Sunday. Yet this same minister claims a great ministry on FaceBook while milking the congregation dry and taking advantage at every turn of discretionary funds, travel funds, and days and days and weeks of time off.

This is a minister who needs serious help. How many more congregations will they damage and break in their path? This is a minister who has confused cultivating a social network for personal fame and glory with actually ministering to and cultivating a meaningful relationship with their congregation. 

Sadly, I know too many people who are also caught up in the magic of social media, or other chaotic schedules and life events, to give the time and attention and intention it takes to cultivate deeper significant relationships beyond their marriage partner.

This is what I see as one of the most critical needs of our society today. Alas, it has no easy answers, just ones that require a giving of self at the deepest level and the concomitant time, attention and intention it mandates. The Mishnah tells us "keneh lecha chaver."

The word keneh literally means "to buy." This is a potent reminder that deeper friendship is an investment. And an investment requires sacrifice. It means sometimes, I put my own needs aside to tend to the needs of someone else. I take that extra five minutes to reach out and be in touch, even at the end of a long hard day or week when I can hardly wait to be done with the computer. Sometimes it means I walk away from my book, my knitting, put aside my laptop, put down the cellphone, to give even a few minutes of eye to eye or certainly heart to heart full attention to the other. I sit shiva with my friend who has just suffered a loss, like Job's friends sat beside him, even if I had other plans for that time.

Jacob is the only individual in the Torah whose encounter with G!d is described as panim el panim, face to face. Abraham and G!d have dialogue, and Moses gets to glimpse G!d’s backside, but neither of these figures meet G!d face to face. Later in the Bible, Gideon encounters G!d face to face, Ezekiel speaks of the Israelites’ encounter with G!d in the wilderness as meeting them face to face, and Hosea makes a similar reference.  In these references, it seems that an individual meeting G!d face to face is quite a special experience. Maybe, in our day, we get to glimpse G!d panim el panim in our deeper soul friendships. Maybe, it's time we spend less time on FaceBook and more time with those who have our backs and who in turn see us panim el panim, face to face, in the deeper meaning of that phrase, at a deeper heart and soul level.

May we be blessed with an encounter with G!d, and may it be panim el panim, face to face, through that deeper soul friendship, that is panim el panim v'nefesh el nefesh, face to face and soul to soul. May we find the time, attention, and intention to nurture our Highest Selves through our deeper relationships, despite the busy chaos of our daily lives.