Alter Ipse Amicus - A Friend is Another Self

My apologies for neglecting this blog over the last couple of weeks, my Teach for America training has kept me busy, and so has blogging about TFA on my other blog. For what feels like the nth time in my life, I recently left a group of friends and a home to go make new friends and a new home. This has led me to think about friends.

As our lives move us around, we have lots of different kinds of friends. For today’s purposes I am going to split them into two groups. Friends of choice, and friends of circumstance. I am often struck as I meet up with old friends or extended family members how much easier it is to distinguish between these two groups. At some happy times when I meet up with an old friend or family member, it is as if the time and distance that has separated us physically hasn’t put any distance in our friendship. We are friends not only because of shared experiences, beliefs, interests, but also a general enjoyment of each other’s company and a feeling of mutual understanding. Even if we haven’t seen each other or talked to each other for some time, we are able to catch up quickly on each other and quickly enjoy our previous friendship. Meeting up with my close friend from Paris days here in L.A. has been precisely such a meeting.

Other times, meeting an old friend turns very awkward when I feel that I have nothing to talk to them about, and sometimes I wonder why we were friends in the first place. I call these friends of circumstance. We were friends because we shared some experience, were members of a common group, or shared an interest. Once those commonalities are no longer shared, our friendship can easily dissolve. Once we stop communicating, our friendship dies. Our understanding one for the other does not stretch beyond simple circumstances.

I think that friends of choice are the friends that we would choose, and indeed do choose among alternatives. Sometimes in any given social group, I have a hard time distinguishing who are merely my friends due to circumstance, and who are my friends because we have literally chosen each other. Because we don’t have the time in this life to stay closely connected to everyone we meet and would like to befriend, I think that time can reveal some of the character of a friendship.

Pleasant Beggars

Beggars across the world have a lot in common I think; In every country and continent they seem to me to have an air of beaten down quiet desperation coupled with a persistence born of necessity sometimes mixed with a tinge of madness. As I’m writing this, I realize that most people don’t talk to a lot of beggars… I usually don’t carry on conversations with them, but as a missionary in Italy, I felt a mandate to talk to everyone, superstars, cardinals, and beggars a like. Given that there are a lot more beggars than there are cardinals I seemed to talk to a lot of them.

Today I walked out of a pharmacy and a beggar at the exit greeted me with the usual desperate beaten down tone “good morning” could you spare any change? I had run from my dorm, and had only brought my credit card, and so I told him that I didn’t have any. His response surprised me. “Oh that’s ok man, don’t worry about it man, you have a good day man, and God bless man.” I smiled and started the walk back up the hill. Walking out of the grocery store I was greeted by another beggar: “Hey could you spare any change?” I gave the same response, and the beggar responded in the same warm tone as his colleague that I had encountered earlier “Well you go and have a good day then”

These beggars treated me better than the people cashiers in the stores whose wages I was helping to pay! I wonder what makes L.A. beggars so cheery?