because your own brain just isn’t working or you have no clue what’s going on. We need a friend that we can ask. Sometimes, we need to hear harsh truths from someone whose opinion we trust. That’s why we need the smart, honest friend. The sage is the friend who will tell you that you can’t make a living at underwater basket weaving no matter how good you are at it, and that maybe you should be pursuing a more practical career and not a hobby. She will also be the person who tells you that accounting is sucking the life out of you; that a girl who reads neuroscience books for fun might want to do something with that instead. When everyone you know just adores the boyfriend you’ve broken up and gotten back together with a dozen times, this is the friend who will tell you to knock off the games and get rid of both the drama and the loser guy, because you’re too smart and pretty to be wasting your time this way. This is the friend who will have the courage to tell you that your life is a mess and maybe you need therapy more than new video games or clothes. He or she will like you enough to be brutally, and constructively, honest. He simply wants what is best for you and has no time for anyone standing in the way of that — even if the person in the way is you.
If you don’t have a sage, go find one. If you are the sage for your friends, Godspeed, my friend. Keep reading, learning, and paying attention. The rest of us would fall apart without your wisdom.
The Bold Adventurer
As great as it sounds to spend the weekend in your jammies curled up on the couch binge-watching the entire series of Gilmore Girls, that’s not really a life. Think how sad that would sound as an epitaph! That’s why we need our adventurous friends. Our favorite adrenaline junkies drag us out of our comfort zone every chance they get. They drink deeply from the experiences of life and want to try almost everything at least once before they die.
While some of us feel the need to map out a plan and cover all the contingencies before we act, this friend just boldly leaps. She encourages us to stop focusing on being safe or indulging in our perfectionist tendencies to only do things when we can do them “right.” Her life motto is “Throw caution to the wind, grab a wild hair, and just go!”
Your bold-adventurer friend sees exactly how big the world is and aches to explore it all. Yes, she can tire you out, but it’s totally worth it. She’s the reason you finally ate sushi, joined a gym, climbed a mountain, and floated down the Frio River. Exhausting, but worth it, this friend will lead you through hairbrained adventures whose tales you’ll be regaling your grandchildren with in years to come, or will merely get you off the couch into the bright sunshine. You’re not a mole, and sunlight is a very good thing.
The Holy One
“Did you go to Mass this weekend?” “Can I pray for you?” “Can I pray with you?” God bless our holy friends. Compared with the adventurous friend, this one can seem a little tame by comparison, but don’t be fooled. There is a depth and beauty to this friendship you won’t find anywhere else. My holy friends are the ones I turn to when life gets wickedly hard and I need a reminder that I’m not alone. There is great comfort in knowing that whatever crud I’m mired in at the moment is just for the moment. As my favorite holy friend often reminds me: “I read the Book, and it all turns out right in the end. If it’s not right, then this isn’t the end.” That kind of wisdom, the hours of deep soul-searching conversation, and the insistent nudge in the right direction make this friend a necessary one to have.
Your holy friend lives each day as if it’s his last because he knows tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. He’s constantly striving for heaven and would like nothing more than to have you walk the straight and narrow with him. If we become a reflection on the people around us, who couldn’t stand to be a bit holier?
The Best Friend/Soul Mate
If my husband is part of my heart, my best friend is a big chunk of my soul. There are days when she’s the only reason I’m sane. On days when the children are wild, dinner is burned, and the bank account is empty, she’s the magic that keeps me going. Fourteen years of friendship and counting, she knows that I am one big old hot mess and still loves me anyway. She’s the person I call while I’m waiting on the pregnancy test results, and I provide a voice of calm when she’s waiting on hers. She’s my confidante and conscience, my favorite cheerleader, and the team I always root for.
We only have room for one or two of these friends in our life at any given time, and to lose a best friend can feel like an amputation, as though you’ve lost a necessary part of yourself. These are the few rare friends who manage to cross over into becoming family, the ones we really, deeply love, and they become a part of our soul.
There’s more to a group of friends than just having stuff in common, hanging out together, and having a good time. Have you ever thought about what it is that your friends love and appreciate about you? We all have our own place within our groups of friends, our own special niche to fill. Have you ever thought about who you are to the people you hang out with, and whether your people are acquaintances or something more?
Are you the mentor or the sage? Do your friends come to you for advice or for you to help them with life skills? Are you the comforter or the clown? Are you the caretaker or the adventurous one? If you’re trying to talk everyone into climbing Mount Kilimanjaro next summer, or joining you in a CrossFit class, it may be blindingly obvious. If you’re on your knees praying for the people you love and reminding them to get to confession, you probably have an idea who you are within your social groups. You may be filling one specific role, or a mishmash of three or four. The important thing isn’t the label concerning where you fit in your relationships, but that you are in a role you’re comfortable filling.
The people who make up our lives — the acquaintances, friends, work friends, and soul mates — are the connections that make up the fabric of our lives. We invest in others’ lives and get happily tangled up in all of the big and small things that accompany that investment. These people add their own spicy flavor to our lives and help us to discover the person we never knew we always wanted to be.
Chapter 3
How Many Friends Do You Really Need?
“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
— Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables
“You really need only one good friend in life,” my grandmother has repeatedly told me. “To expect anything more than that is just selfish.” She’s not wrong, of course; one really good friend in life is actually an amazingly huge gift. She and her best friend, Lou, literally knew each other their whole lives, and the tales of their shenanigans are legendary in our neck of the woods. They have entire conversations made up of single words, partial phrases, and meaningful looks that leave them doubled over in stitches or “hmmm-ing” in mutual disapproval. A friendship that’s more than ninety years in length means most of the words are simply unnecessary. I agree with her. Expecting God to grant us more than one Lou in life would be selfish; it would also be a recipe for ending up in jail. Old ladies or not, there are shenanigans.
While I recognize the truth in what she said, it has never failed to make me feel sad and a little lonely to hear. The extrovert in me always asks: “Only one? That’s all we get?” Now that I’m a grown-up and have seen a little more of life, I can clearly see both her wisdom and where she was wrong.
Grandma’s “one good friend” is a bare minimum. When God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gn 2:18) at the beginning of time, he gave Adam the starter set of just one companion. Eve may have been all Adam needed, but as soon as there were more people around, it’s likely he didn’t mind the extra company. It’s also important to note the word “expect.” Just because we shouldn’t go around expecting God to gift us with more than the bare minimum, it’s not wrong to ask for it. Ask God for all of the people you want, but recognize each one for the gift that he or she is.
Not everyone can be a Lou, and thank goodness for that. We really can’t be super close with more than just a tiny handful of people