Being a friend

People everywhere have advice to give. Some of it you seek out for yourself but often advice is just given to you. For example, I can’t purchase Spam without being told it isn’t good for me or, “You know that’s not real meat, right?” It’s advice and advice is just another opinion and we all know what those are. So who am I to give advice on being a friend? I’m nobody…At least that’s how I feel in some friendships and it’s why I’m writing this --- to help someone be a better friend. Me.

            I like lists. I think if someone were to give me advice on something, I think a list of steps to follow would be nice. So I’m going to try and give my advice (remember, I’m nobody) on being a friend.

1. Show up and be on time.

           

            Brilliant, right? Seems like common sense but if you tell someone you’re going to be there, be there. If you give them a time that you are going to be there, you have a bit more of a commitment and should be there and on time. For example, someone tells you they are going to start the meeting at 10:00am, it’s perfectly ok for you to expect the meeting to start at 10:00am. But in this day and age, a “10:00am” start time for a meeting is really “10:06am” because:

“We’re gonna go ahead and give the stragglers just a few more minutes before we start”.

Boooo! NO! Forget the stragglers and their lazy ape walk to and from meetings. If I can get there on time, then you can get there on time. Contrary to what you might think, you aren’t more important then anyone else, even when your business card says you are.

            Along those same lines, there is no such thing as “fashionably late”. That’s just a term for “being rude”. If the party starts at 6:00pm, you should show up just before 6:00pm. If dinner starts at 5:30pm, you show up before 5:30pm, maybe even help the host. In none of these circumstances is it ok to be late. There is no event that you can show up late for that isn’t considered rude to the host and the other guests. I guess being late for your own funeral is good practice, but most of us are doing that all the time anyway, except for when we die and then it doesn’t matter—why? Because you were late.

            Family dinner is at 6:30pm. If you show up at 7:30pm, guess what’s going on? Everyone who knows what it means to be a good friend is mad at you for being a bad, rude friend. Oh, and they’re really hungry. Whatever made you late, save emergencies while en route, could have been avoided by being considerate and prepared in the first place. But bad rude friends are rewarded for that behavior with a warm meal and welcome arms, but nobody remembers the schmuck who showed up on time and helped set the table and prepare for dinner.

2. Be accountable.

            If you broke it, say you did and you’re sorry. It’s what we taught our kids starting at age 3, or earlier. If you said you would be somewhere and then didn’t make it, call and let them know and why. Tell the truth, it’s easy to know when someone is lying. Friends make mistakes, friends forgive, but if you aren’t accountable for your own actions, who is going to be? The friendship ends up being accountable—and the friendship doesn’t care if you don’t.

            Being accountable for the friendship is important too. If you aren’t engaged and actively listening and caring about your friendship, it dissolves. Unmanaged friends become family --or worse. That just means that you never chose your family, but they love you and you love them and they’ll always be there for you, except the crappy family members or the dead ones. You don’t have to be accountable for your family members because the love is implied.

            You chose your friends and the close ones give you a lot of value in laughter and support. If you don’t manage that relationship and hold yourself accountable for its success, the good friends become like family members that live on the other side of the country or worse, Idaho. You don’t see or talk much, you might exchange email about important events, or even occasional phone calls. But then finally you’re shaking hands at a common “family” member’s funeral asking,

“What went wrong? Why don’t we talk anymore?”

3. Live like everyone else is busy too.

            Contrary to what you might think, that guy over there also has a full time job, kids, extra curricular activities, hobbies, chores, and a full schedule of events in his life. He may have more to do than you. He may have less to do than you, but always treat him like his time matters to him. Your time matters to you, you should assume that his time matters to him. For example, don’t call me on your cell phone and quickly announce that, “This is great, I can call you on my way home from work and I’m not wasting any time because I’m just driving.” You see, there is someone else on the other end of that phone whose time you very well may be wasting. Be sensitive to other people’s time, they are also busy. You may feel like you’re super-important, but so do other people. Just respect that.

            Don’t complain about being busy. It makes you a whiner and announces you have poor time management skills. Everything is relative. You being a busy housewife without a traditional office job is no busier than the housewife with a 40 hour a week full time professional office job. Both of you can handle different work loads in different ways. It’s relative to your comfort level and what you can tolerate. Just like the jobless 45 year old living in his parent’s basement, who can’t find work because his “World of Warcraft” account is just too much to manage, feels like he’s busy—so are you. We are all busy and we all handle our daily lives differently. If you’re whining to your friends about how busy you are and you just don’t have the time to spend with friends, you can cut them out and then you’ll have all the time you need for all that more important other stuff.

So there you have it…There’s my 3 item list for being a friend. I try to follow all three but that’s because I wrote the list—I’m not going to make a list like this:

1. Don’t be narcissistic
2. Be healthy and skinny
3. Don’t drink alcohol

And then tell you:

1. I’m not
2. I am
3. I don’t

If it sounds like high maintenance to be my friend based on this list, then you’d be surprised. I’m actually pretty easy to get along with and don’t expect much except, ...well,... let my friend here sum it all up for you: the Queen of Soul; Aretha Franklin: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

RESPECT: LIVE IT

I have great friends and I have great family members. Sometimes those lines cross and that’s fine as long as it was on purpose. For me, friends that have crossed into family status because neither one of us were accountable for maintaining that friendship is sweet and sour; we’re still friends, but I only talk to you occasionally. And soon, always sooner than we like, we'll find ourselves under a mutual umbrella, in the rain, and in our Sunday best with outstretched hands asking, “What went wrong? Why don’t we talk anymore?”