What is friendship?
I don’t count many bad days with friends. Of course, there are life’s shitstorms—and friends are there in “good times and in bad.” (Kinda like wives). But friends—ones worth keeping and doing life’s time with—do their best not to cause shitstorms for each other. Tweet
Highlights
Once upon a time we spent what seemed like lifetimes with our friends.
Those go away with love, marriage and baby carriages.
The back nine are all about creating the conditions for and savoring the moments with your buddies.
For men its about the moment, not the in-between moments.
I want to talk about the idea and reality of friendship — one of life’s greatess gifts and joys.
Here is my experience: I don’t count many bad days with friends.
Here is my experience: I don’t count many bad days with friends. Of course, there are life’s shit storms, and friends are there in “good times and in bad.” (Kinda like wives). But friends—the ones worth keeping and doing life’s time with—do their best not to cause shit storms for each other.
We bring our best-guy game to our friends. Friends come in many flavors. Regardless of how you are drawn, all flavors and sketches of friends try to bring our best guy for our moments together. I do my best to bring “Fun Guy” to those who I count as friends. Here is a sketch of my flavor to savor: Who is Guy Shepherd.
Once upon a time, we spent what seemed like lifetimes with our friends. Those lifetimes gave way to other lifetimes: love, marriage and baby carriages. Endless summers of wanderlust are no more. The back nine are all about creating the conditions for and savoring the moments with your buddies.
The best way to think about friendship is to reflect on the actual friends that you have.
Guy Shepherd is promiscuously friendly. I am a fan of Man. A lover of the pluribus of the human family. I like party-of-one, standout personalities more than most—or at least more than Mrs. Shepherd and my manager.
There is something self-limiting about friendship. Like love, friendship is limited to a few. True friends are not scalable like Facebook “friends.” Friends are necessarily a scarce resource. If you are lucky, you can count a handful of true friends. What is a true friend? Someone that you consider, and who considers you, worthy of love and defense. Everyone ought to know the joy and security of a true friend who will be there, when you need him, and when you don’t. I am such a friend to a few and I have a few that are the same to me.
A man who has stitched together an entourage of friends through time is truly blessed — and Guy Shepherd is very blessed guy.
A word on the difference between male and female friendships. I have a tendency to universalize my particular. In my defense, I’m pretty good at it. I’m not a constant in the lives of those on whom I count as my closest friends. I get intel on my friends’ lives from Mrs. Shepherd who monitors Facebook. My chosen medium of friend-exchange are text strings. It’s my hotline to my friends. When guys get together, there is no mention of the passage of time between encounters. That’s a lady thing. Male friendships are in the moment. The time between moments collapses and we pick up where we left off like its was yesterday. For men it’s about the moment, not the in-between moments. I think this one of the reasons why male friendship developed easier and is simpler to maintain.
Next time we pick up this friend thread, I will tell you the story of my new best friend, “SandMan,” introduced to me by “The Manager” a year ago.
To reach Guy Shepherd contact: [email protected]
For media enquires contact: [email protected]
