Selfless Friendship

So I’ve been thinking about the nature of friendship and how it only works if the two parties are selfless. You give all of yourself to support them and their dreams, and hopefully, just hopefully, they will do the same for you. Now, I know what people will say. If you are being selfless expecting something in return, then isn’t that selfish? Of course it is, but everyone is selfish. That’s what motivates people. But if they were smart, they would figure out that the most selfish thing to do would be to be selfless.

As some people know, I have become very good friends with a group of Christian Conservatives. A lot of people, even people whom I call friends, might have problems with this. I can just hear it now, “How can you be friends with people who voted for Bush, are Pro Life, and are against Gay marriage? How could you support them spreading this crap?” But here in lies the truth. Do these things disturb me a bit? I would be a liar if I said that they didn’t. But they’re my friends, and I love them, and they love me, and that is what really matters. There is no pretension about what I will be or what they will be. There is no condition on our friendship. It’s just us, and they support me in my efforts, and I support them in theirs. I support them, not only because I love them, but because I know that even if I don’t agree fully with their methods, that they will do good in people’s lives.

See, that’s my job as a friend. It isn’t to figure out what I want my friend to be and make them go there. It is to figure out what they want to be and what they can be and help them get there. It isn’t about what’s best for me. It’s about what’s best for them. Heck, I’m really good friends with a girl who met her boyfriend right after I met her. I love her to death, and because I love her, I support her relationship, because that is what’s best for her in her life. I’d love nothing better than to have her as my own, but that’s bullshit. It’s all about me in the now, not me in the future, who will always have some one in his life who is kind and supportive of him, no matter what he is or is not.

Then I look at my best friend. He’s put himself out there for me in the countless times in the years that we’ve known each other. But in every single occasion where we could have made or broke our friendship, we always made it. He moved to NYC and it made us not take each other for granted. He offered me a job and I turned it down, and then he understood what my goals were and understood that I could stand my ground. We had a mutual friend who wanted nothing but to bring us apart, but we just grew closer together.

He and I have different lifestyles, and that’s fine, because we compliment each other and are never afraid to tell each other to brutal and honest truth, because we know that it’s out of love. Some girls, and even he, would argue that he is “afraid to commit”, but I would argue that most girls are afraid to commit to him. Sure, they want to have a relationship with him, but it’s only if he becomes someone who he is not, and that’s the problem.

Who the hell wants to be around people who want to change them? Who wants to be around someone who basically tells them that they don’t cut the mustard? All I know is that I will always love my friends, the people who see me for me and nothing else. The me with all his warts, the self doubt, the laziness, the chronic masturbation, the alcoholic sleepwalking self. That’s me, and I’m here to stay.

Structure

Last night I was at the 30th Birthday party of my brilliant and beautiful writing friend. She said that she liked my writing but it needs structure. I value her opinion, but it creates a dilemma. I hate structure. Whenever I’ve tried to put structure to anything or I have had structure thrusted upon me, I get paralyzed by it.

I remember back in high school when we learned about the structure of a paragraph. Topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a conclusion. I got so consumed with getting this structure down that I couldn’t write anything good anymore. When I told structure to go take it in the pooper, I started getting A’s on my papers. Ironic, isn’t it?

See, I went to a Hippy school. We learned how to write by just writing all the time. We didn’t learn grammar. We just wrote a shitload and went from there. I mean what the fuck is a predicate nominative anyway, and what does it have to do with the price of tea in China? Maybe that and 50 cents will get me a cup of Coffee. Although these days it’s more like that and 5 bucks, but that’s another story for another day.

But it isn’t just in my writing that structure screws me up. At work, we have this “project plan”, which is basically a way for people who know nothing about programming to crawl up the programmers’ asses. It also makes other people look a lot more important than they are. I just want to code damnit. I want to create some cool shit that will actually help the users. But now I have some jackass who doesn’t know what he is talking about structuring the way that I work. It’s like trying to make love to a virgin who is giving you sex advice. Fuck me here! Fuck me there! Harder! Softer! Faster! Slower! Don’t cum yet! If you can manage to keep it up, all you would want to do is just bust and leave. Meanwhile, if she would have shut up, you might have stayed and spooned.

Here lies another problem. It takes me a while to get into things, but once I get into them, it’s all or nothing. No half ass. When I was a kid, we had these wide steps with no banister. I was scared to walk down them, so I used to just slide down them on my ass, one step at a time. Shit, I didn’t even get my license until I was 25. Now I run downstairs and drive wherever my heart pleases me.

So I just need to write and code and let the chips fall where they may. In the immortal words of Mary Schmich, “Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.”