Friends and 'keeping in touch'

"Adam," my mom enthused, "You know, I was just talking to Aunt Elli, and -- remember her friends the Bronstiers? Well, their daughter Maura is now living in Oakland! I told Auntie to pass on your e-mail to her. Maybe you two can have lunch or whatever and..."

"Mom, please don't" I politely protested. "I don't need another friend right now. I need to be a better friend to the ones I've got."

My mom, bless her soul, was neither enlightened nor convinced.

"How can you have too many friends?!" she argued, "We're not talking marriage here, for Godsake, Adam, just lunch or coffee..."

I insisted more firmly: No. I felt guilty, but only a little bit.

Making friends is easy. Making GOOD friends is much harder. But maintaining or -- even scarier -- breaking off friendships? That's the toughest.

Rewarding? Hopefully. Frustrating? Often that, too. And sometimes painful along the journey? Yes.

---

My parents have lived in the same city -- actually, the same house! -- for three decades, and have been members at the same temple for about the same length of time. They have pretty much the same (many!) friends now as they did when I was growing up at home, and I am thankful for this, though admittedly sometimes almost envious that their social life is currently more rockin' than mine.

My folks clearly haven't had the same transience of friendships as I've dealt with, though, at least not recently. In just the last 10 years, I've lived and made friends in Evanston (near Chicago), Bloomington (near Indianapolis), Mannheim (in Germany), Boston, and lastly San Francisco, where I live now. Then there are the friends I have who now live in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Costa Rica, and more than a dozen other countries. And no, I'm not counting "Internet friends."

All in all, I count more than 500 contacts in my addressbook. All are 'friends' of various degrees... former work friends, gym buddies, MBA colleagues, that couple I met while kayaking, and so on. To put it in perspective, if I were to contact each of these folks just once a quarter and spend ten minutes in the process, that's nearly an hour a day of just 'keeping in touch'. And while some of these folks can be "hello'd" in under 10 minutes, perhaps, quite a few deserve far more of my time and, yes, my friendship.

That's a lot of dedication per day. That's a lot of dedication in my life. And it's dedication that I have sadly failed in carrying out.

So, unsurprisingly, I've lost friends. Some got married and we seemed to have less and less in common, as we cross-talked about babies and babes, mortgages and job searching. Distance, too, has been a definite issue. Out of sight out of mind may be grossly clich?d, but no less a factor.

But marriage and distance account for only a part of the lost friendship tally. Sometimes people -- or their interests or needs or circumstances -- simply change, and, well, the friendship no longer applies as it once did. In these cases, sometimes it seems preferable to 'pull the plug' rather than watch the friendship slowly, painfully wither... with plodding uncomfortableness hidden under strained and feigned interest: "So, what's new?"

But who can bear to tell someone, "I don't think we should be friends anymore"? With similar wording, romantic relationships can be at least theoretically 'cut clean'. Employers can (and oh so frequently DO) nowadays sever increasingly dysfunctional work 'relationships' at the drop of a hat without even having to bluster through much of a rationale much less an apology. But saying goodbye to a friend for the last time? Who can do that?

"Let's keep in touch," we tell each other. Perhaps we mean it, perhaps we don't. More likely, we simply don't know where we'll be or how we'll feel in 5 years or even 5 months.

Thus, with faded friendships too often experienced and understandably feared, the challenge then becomes more effectively managing the remaining (500+!) friendships.

"Managing." So businesslike. Outlook entries, IM lists, Christmas-cards-or-not, form letters, ad naseum. Oh, for the days of the small village, tighter boundaries, and simpler world!

The answer, then, becomes one constrained by practicalities and too removed from idealism, but nonetheless clear. Prioritize, organize, and balance frequency of contacts with Quality Time. Remember birthdays, if nothing else.

Or better yet, call. In this age of D.I. (Digital Instantaneousness), the phone may seem so anachronistic, especially for us Geek Guys. But it conveys a warmth that cannot be duplicated by anything other than looking into someone's eyes and smiling.

Of equal importance is the concept of letting go. With direct goodbyes not a pallatable option, at least we should drift gracefully, honestly. As tempting as it is to promise future contact ("I'll write!"), 'tis better to follow our hearts before succumbing to conventional politeness.

---

No, Mom, I don't need a new friend. I have too many friends that need my friendship, and they've been waiting too long already.

Lawsuits -- Greed or Need?

In an earlier entry, I called attention to "yet another example" of an American legal system run absurdly amuck. In this example, a lawyer had sent a cease and desist letter insisting that a journalist stop using his own name in his byline, due to theoretical confusion over the lawyer's similarly named (famous) client.

Of course, it's easy, perhaps too easy to poke fun of ridiculous lawyer-speak and lawsuits, and for much of this, we have only the lawyers (and their misguided / greedy clients) to blame.

Or is it really that simple? An article in the New York Times instead insists that lawsuits are a logical and not-all-that-improper response to a decentralized government.

People have used the tort system to rightfully take on major causes -- product safety, womens' rights, and so forth -- that our American legislature was unable or unwilling to tackle.

As some of you may be aware, I'm a law school graduate myself, and yes, I'm admittedly torn about this. Just as the New York Times article highlights, our tort system is based upon adversarial relationships, which understandably is sometimes neither desireable, efficient, nor fair. But on the other hand, it is true that with our government in the pocket of Big Business, there aren't many other existing means for the common guy to take on, say, General Motors.

All that said, however, I still strongly believe that our tort system is but a bandaid on the sores inflicted by a government which has thoroughly abdicated its proper role as a progressive and reliable watchdog... one with more bite than bark. Americans CAN (and sure, often do) sue large industrial companies for knowingly poisoning the populace, but it'd be so much better if our government actually did its job and protected our health and our environment without us having to fight tooth and nail for this 'privilege.'

Pictoral Oxymoron

For the kids! For the kids!

Best way for politicians to pander to the Religious Right and much of middle America? Pass a law to protect kids!

It doesn't matter if your law actually results in helping kids. It doesn't matter if it actually results in harm to those some children. What counts is that you're actually winning the hearts and votes of soccer moms all over the country.

More importantly, how could you ever vote AGAINST kids? You won't support library filtering? You WANT our kids exposed to filth... with our taxes? Kiss goodbye to reelection.

A current example of this hypocritical frenzy is the congressional establishment of a new kids.us domain. No one has offered how this is supposed to work in practice, or even provided any evidence to suggest that it's actually a good idea in the first place. But really, what congresscritter could afford to face attack ads claiming: "Senator Smith voted against protecting your children from pornography and gambling on the net"?

From a practical perspective, I can't see how this new domain would be beneficial in any way.

Let's say schools and libraries decided to limit kids to browsing ONLY sites in this domain. How could this possibly work for both a five year old and a twelve year old, with such vastly different capacities for absorbing and synthesizing info?

Even if such access restrictions were thrust upon only elementary school kids, what content would be designated as 'kid-friendly'? In particularly what about such borderline resources as dictionaries (could be some bad words!), news sites (disturbing content), international pen pal forums (all those pedophiles!), and so on?

What incentive would companies have to even create and maintain content for this domain and this demographic, especially when such efforts would require extra work on top of existing .com (and .uk, .ca, etc.) sites?

What if 'questionable content' was found on a site in kids.us? Would the offending site be immediately removed? Could parents sue? Would there be criminal sanctions?

In a nutshell, then, the new domain is of questionable usefulness and has been ill-defined to say the least. I'm betting the Congress spent less than an hour studying the issue. After all, it's for the kids! Who could say no?

Want to know more? Read articles here.

Please stop using your name

Yet one more reason why lawyers get a (deservedly!) bad rap.

Common sense up in smoke

District Judge Thomas Gilbert has taken indefinite voluntary leave from his duties after he was spotted smoking the joint at a Rolling Stones concert at Ford Field in Detroit.
- news item on ananova.com, November 9, 2002

Am I in the minority for seeing this as absolutely absurd? Can you imagine a similar situation in which a cop caught speeding tearfully turns in his badge the next day? Oh wait, there's a key difference: the judge in the above story wasn't endangering anyone's life.

In a written statement Mr Gilbert said: "I broke the law by twice puffing on a marijuana cigarette during a rock concert. I deeply regret this error in judgment, for I have let down my fellow judges, the court staff, my family, and the community."

Could this not have appeared in The Onion without anyone blinking? What will it take for our American society to join the rest of the industrialized, civilized world and stop the guilt and -- more importantly -- stop the absolutely asinine "War on Drugs"?

I'm not all that fond of the concept of 'wars' on anything, frankly, but if we must use macho language to hammer home political themes, how about a War on Poverty (but this time, finish the job)? Or a War on Domestic Abuse?

I'm also all for a "War on Political Opportunism and Far Right Pandering" but I don't think even the spineless Democrats in office would be any help with that.

Simple relationship truths

- We want what we cannot have.
- We want what we do not have.
- When we have something, we want something else.
- This doesn't mean we cannot enjoy what we have.
- We have great advice for everyones' problems but don't follow our own advice.
- It's easier to bitch than to change.

- We cannot change others. Really.
- Women assume all men just want sex. They're wrong.
- Men assume all women want commitment. They're wrong.
- Men and women don't really love what the media suggests we love.
- If you're not getting hurt, you're not living.
- Seeking love is expensive. Love itself is priceless.
- Online dating attracts some real creeps. Just like offline dating.
- Attraction is >90% non-verbal. You cannot really be in love with someone without seeing them in person.
- Swing dancing is a great way to meet a special someone.
- Swing dancing is a sucky way to meet a special someone.
- See that 'unattractive' guy and his hottie girlfriend and visa versa? There's hope.
- Not sure how you're coming across (e.g., desperate, too flirtatious, cold, etc.)? Buy a friend (not a best friend) a drink, ask a few questions, and you'll know. You may cry, but you'll know.
- You're not the only one depressed by the pukey pda in the park.
- Work out. You'll look more attractive in the long run and exercise = endorphins which make you FEEL better, too.
- Keeping a journal helps you sort out your thoughts. Just beware / be aware of who reads it.
- Just because I'm writing this on a Friday night does not mean I'm a lame ass :D

[Originally written and posted by me on a national swing dance board]