Busy-ness And Friendships

Hello Everyone,

It has been well over a year that I posted the last essay on this website, and I am sure many of you forgot about me. I can’t blame you. Truth is: I just got so busy that I couldn’t fit in writing essays into my schedule. Today, a year-and-some later, I am finally taking the time again to write and re-connect – and I hope to find you still interested and curious about life.

This past year has been a very busy year for us, my husband and me. He went through an additional year of university training, started a new job and is currently adjusting to its very different daily rhythms. I made some important changes to my practice, went on a long road trip to Alberta with my mother, started an online degree program, and tried to keep up with my friendships.

Often throughout the year I felt guilty because I hadn’t spoken to a friend in a long time – sometimes over a month, sometimes even two months. I began to value the convenience of email, which allowed me at least to type messages at 12:00 am – often the only time of day that I seemed to have for personal, relaxed conversation. I began to fret about the busy-ness of life and the feeling that I didn’t have time for the important things in life. But then it occurred to me one day: maybe this is actually okay. Maybe what I am experiencing – and what a lot of my friends seemed to be experiencing, too – is just a normal phase of life.

It is an old truth that the only constant in the universe is change. Life consists of constant, ongoing, relentless change; even our bodies renew and change themselves almost completely roughly every seven years. The seasons change, our minds change, our flexibility (physical, emotional, mental) changes, our relationships and capabilities change – everything always changes.

However, within this constant change there often is rhythm and a natural flow that make change more bearable. Since we know that there will be spring and summer, it is easier to accept and maybe even embrace winter. Since we know that there will be a Sunday, a holiday, a break coming up sometime, we can keep going with our tasks for a while longer. And because we have been teenagers ourselves, we can more easily accept the mood-swings of the teens in our lives – we know that this, too, shall pass.

Sometimes the rhythms are short and clear because they repeat often, like the change of seasons. Sometimes they are longer but we know about them intuitively or from experience; life is such a rhythm we know although we haven’t lived it all yet. But some rhythms seem to be more random, less predictable, and sometimes hard to understand. Friendship rhythms can fall under that category.

Some friendships seem meant to be. No matter what happens, no matter how often we connect – or don’t connect, no matter how similar or different our lives go: we still stay in contact and when we speak we know each other, love each other, and understand each other. There is no (or very little) guilt when we don’t manage to meet for a year or two – and yet we know that one phone call, one email, one visit will allow us to pick up where we left off. Those, I believe, are the friendships that are bound to our life-rhythm. They are of a quality and purpose that supports the long rhythm of a life time, from youth to old age. They are as patient and reliable as our bodies – with us, not matter what; sometimes not in agreement, but always true enough to keep trying.

Then there are friendships that are bound to shorter rhythms, e.g. the rhythm of our career: they change as our career changes. As we are starting a new job, those friends we made at the old company may fall away. Or those high school friends with whom we swore to be friends forever are suddenly not calling back or we don’t find the time to meet with them. It can be difficult to follow those rhythms, especially if the new phase into which we are moving is scary, unwanted, or vastly different from what we have known before. This often happens when a relationship ends in separation or death. Suddenly old friends stop calling or visit less often. It may hurt because it can feel like abandonment. But often it is just a recognition – at a very deep and unconscious level – that the purpose for this friendship, it’s time, has passed (sometimes it’s also plain fear of not knowing what to say; but that’s for another essay).

Finally, there are “seasonal” friendships. Those are the friendships that can be tied to very specific events – the trip to Europe, the summer at the lake, the yoga class, the book club, etc. Those friendships follow the shortest rhythms of our life and, although often deep and immensely healing, they usually aren’t missed as much as they pass. Maybe that is because we recognize their short-lived nature more easily because they are so closely tied into our activities.

What does all of this have to do with not having time to connect and feeling guilty about it? Well, the feeling of guilt usually comes up when we feel that we have missed doing something important, or if we feel we have done something that wasn’t warranted. But what if we recognize the busy-ness in our lives as a normal part of our life’s rhythm – middle-age, roughly the time between 30 and 50 when we are busy-busy building lives, growing assets, developing careers and / or families, etc? This is the time in our life-rhythms when we create our highest achievements and juggle the most things: work, kids, parents, house / mortgage, yard work, repairs, household, traveling, pets, exercise, diet, cars, continued education – oh yes, and friends and time for ourselves.

If this is true, if those years in the middle of our biography are the years of juggling and busy-ness, and if our friendships follow the rhythms of our lives in some ways, then maybe there is less reason for feeling guilty if we don’t manage to call our friends every week. Maybe we need to accept that this is a phase of life, part of a rhythm, and that those who are meant to be in this place with us, will be. That is not to say that we should – or could – willfully neglect our friendships; but if it is becoming an additional chore to call Jack or meet with Jill, then maybe Jack and Jill don’t belong to the particular rhythms we are living right now. Maybe at this time in our biographies we can only hold on to those life-rhythm friends.

Looking around I can see clearly that I am not the only one caught in the busy-ness of mid-life – even my single friends seem to be juggling and rushing most of their days. And while there is reason to discuss the value of down-time, relaxation, and de-stressing life choices, the bottom line is that this is a busy time in most people’s life. Those of my friends who are in the same boat are also those who understand that I may only be able to send that email at 12:00 am once every month. Indeed, usually their answer arrives about three weeks later, penned at 12:30 am and signed with a smiley.

I know that most of them will be there when this phase slowly morphs into the next, when we have a bit more time at our hands, when it seems easier to free a whole Sunday afternoon for a nice hike. Until then we will continue to email, phone, and meet whenever we can squeeze a minute out of our schedules. We’ll say as much in 15 minutes as we can, and we will likely connect just wonderfully. And if we don’t speak in a month or two, we will smile about that, too, and promise we’ll try to do better next time – knowing full well that, try as we may, it’ll probably be another two months until we’ll have coffee again. No use stressing about it.

Until next time,

Sabine

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