A Facebook Post About Friendship--with all the comments

Cliff and I eating sushi in Poland--and joking about eating local cuisine.

[I posted this essay on facebook and got such good comments I decided to post it here with the comments.]

A few hours ago I left a weekend with my best friend Cliff Almes. We were roommates in the Army in the 70s. He stayed in Germany and is Bruder Timotheus at a Lutheran Monastery in Darmstadt. Modern life is obsessed with leadership. But leaders without friends are crippled. 

On the way to Germany I listened to a talk from a guy I disagree with on most things, but I agree with him on Friendship: Yesterday I was listening to a podcast from a recent conference in Aspen. The speaker was Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska. He was talking about problems in our culture now and in the future created by the digital revolution. 

But the last problem he mentioned predates the internet by a lot, by centuries to at least the beginning of modernity. Sasse said 29% of American women and 61% of men say their spouse or significant other is their best friend. Sasse said this means women are at least twice as good at making and keeping solid, deep friendships as men. At least. 

I can't speak for women, but a man who has no male friends is crippled in life's journey. I have known many men in business and in the Army who have made some public profession that their wife is their best friend and very privately told me of their "best friend" was going to make them choose between their marriage and the Army. 

Friendship is one of the Four Loves CS Lewis explains in his wonderful book of the same title. It is equal to romance, family love and charity. But a half century ago, Lewis said it was rare and becoming more so among modern professional men. Less so among women. Could you tell your best friend of the rush you felt when you confronted another man in public and he backed off? I could. 

My best friends are a firefighter and a monk, both veterans. They are also men and understand the rush of a fight. Men and women are very different in so many ways and those ways become prominent at moments of stress. 

To believe in the power of love seems crazy in the midst of our fractured world. 

But true, deep friendship, built over years and years proves just how love works. We choose our friends, and they choose us. All four loves are what makes a great life.

The comments from Facebook:

• • • Pete Lang

      I have been meeting with a group of men every week to talk about life for decades. They know me better than my wife ever will. I am not so good at the confrontation, but I understand the rush of when I offer my wisdom to another and you can see the light come in their eyes as they finally get “it”

      

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    • Shea IL

      I would add another category that I think essential. I think I first heard the expression from my kids - friend group. I think having a community of some sort is equally important. This is why bowling leagues, social clubs, etc evolved. Sometimes th… 

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        Neil Gussman

        Shea IL oh of course. A group of friends is another dimension of friendship. Just as important.

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      • David Pertuz

        Shea IL agree with this. I have a group of friends that I’ve been with for twenty years now - we go on vacations together, etc. - and they’re priceless.

        

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    • Suzanne Shelley

      Neil Gussman ~ This may be one of your best posts ever. I’d say you hit the nail on the head but there are so many nails mentioned in this thoughtful observation. So glad you got back to Darmstadt to see your best friend ~ seems you have been able to m… 

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        Neil Gussman

        Suzanne Shelley Thanks Suzanne.

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      • Suzanne Shelley

        Neil Gussman Pursuant to your post (capturing a terrific moment of coincidence), my brother just sent me this skit from SNL this weekend 

        https://youtu.be/9XOt2Vh0T8w

        

        YOUTUBE.COM

        Man Park - SNL

        Man Park - SNL

        

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    • Sarah Lenora Gingrich

      Agreed. When we lived in Chile my husband would sometimes, for lack of fellow English-speakers, begin to talk with me about Nascar or football. Though seemingly innocuous, I know how very desperate that showed his situation to be, since I am not an e… 

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        Neil Gussman

        Sarah Lenora Gingrich and if Dustin could see the light of true Motorsport in Formula 1 he could have even more friends!!!!!

        

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      • David Pertuz

        Neil Gussman Truth!!

        

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    • Meredith Hainsworth

      I’ve never understood having your spouse as your best friend. I have such a different relationship with Jeff than I do with my bestie. Both incredibly important people to me, but both relationships are so different. I think the strength in my relations… 

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        Neil Gussman

        And we are embodied spirits in some form. We express ourselves in physical ways. In talking about Friendship in The Four Loves, CS Lewis says men and women can be friends, but when friendship "turns into" love, the phrase itself describes what happens. The characteristic posture of friendship is side-by-side moving toward a goal, working together, etc. The posture of Romantic Love is face-to-face.

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        Neil Gussman

        Meredith Hainsworth when men share hardship and danger those who are capable of friendship bond. It’s no accident my best friends are soldiers and racers.

        

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        Meredith Hainsworth When I did not recover full use of my left (dominant) arm last year, I realized I would never again throw a punch. I told a few friends. My wife would not share my moment of mourning.

        

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        Neil Gussman

        Meredith Hainsworth I know. To say a spouse is one’s best friend says nothing about the sincerity of the speaker, but it says for sure that person does not understand friendship and most likely has no real friends.

        

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      • Colleen Stameshkin

        I could not disagree more. Husbands can be the best of friends, just as a person can have other wonderful close friends of the opposite sex. And also siblings as close friends, even if that often is far from the case. What matters in all these cases is the particulars of your relationships, which are different in every case, so to reason from only your own experience or that of your acquaintances can at best give you unreliable generalizations.

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      • Meredith Hainsworth

        Neil Gussman and I do think that there’s a major problem in our society of men not being encouraged to feel emotion or be vulnerable or whatever and therefore turning to their wives to meet that need. Which is so sad

        

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    • Leif Dolan

      I can't say that my wife is on the list of being a good and close friend. Sometimes she is a foe. We live together and have great love for one another.

      Friendship with other people is not clearly defined for me. I am friendly with my Rabbi, but would… 

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        Neil Gussman

        Leif Dolan as I said to Meredith when men share hardship and danger those who are capable of friendship bond. It’s no accident my best friends are soldiers and racers. Same for you it seems. It's also a matter of sharing lots of time. The Army gives people plenty of time to be stuck doing nothing and able to talk. I used to ride motorcycles. As with bicycles, the difference between those who race and those who ride is huge. My bicyclist friends are racers. Tourist bicyclists (like Harley riders) do not bond the same way.

        

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    • Michal Meyer

      The post and responses make for great reading.

      

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    • Colleen Stameshkin

      Maybe the disagreement here relates to what people mean by "best friend." I have had best friends in the past, by which I mean I could easily state that this particular friend was the person I liked best, wanted to spend the most time with, and truly l… 

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        Neil Gussman

        Colleen Stameshkin Men are so different and male friendship expresses that difference. In the Army, and on loading docks where I worked, one way men point out their friends is by saying horrible things to and about each other in front of a group. It sounds like they hate each other but they are saying "I can say this to Tom, but if you say the same thing, Tom and I will kick your ass." Men also easily form groups and follow an alpha. Anyone who has coached both men and women knows how different men and women are in this way. It made the Army even more difficult for young women. With six kids, I was in a buzzing hive of sibling rivalry. I know siblings can bond, but competitive kids define themselves in opposition to siblings. Best friends in childhood seem to be a refuge from the tensions of family.

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Tragic Accident on a Beautiful Night in Paris

Iron poles along Paris streets prevent parking on the sidewalk. 

A human body flying into one of these poles from a scooter is instantly  broken.

Last night, walking in Paris, I happened on a scene of agony I found terribly familiar. A motor scooter was lying on its side, bent and broken, several feet from the road on the sidewalk. The rider was a dozen feet away, also on the sidewalk. The passenger was against the curb, in the street, partly underneath a parked truck. 

A few feet from the battered scooter, a Honda Civic with a dent and scrape on its left front fender was parked on the sidewalk, its emergency flashing lights adding orange bursts to the red and blue lights from the two ambulances already on the scene. A half dozen medics worked to move the rider and the passenger onto stretchers and into the ambulance. They moved the rider first. I could hear the deep pain in his moans as three medics moved him onto the backboard, then onto a gurney. 

 Last year I yelled and groaned in that same agony when a medic named Mohammed lifted me onto the backboard after warning me how much it would hurt. A woman on the medic team was talking into the ear of the woman under the front of the truck. The scooter passenger was partly covered with a blanket, but I could the white sneaker on her right leg twisted at an impossible angle. 

I did not want to remain among the gawkers longer, and a moment later a policemen pointed and told me to move. I left. From what I could gather watching the witnesses, the car and the scooter were both driving downhill from the Pantheon toward the traffic light opposite Luxembourg Garden. The car made a legal, but possibly unexpected left turn toward an underground parking garage. 

The scooter, I am guessing by the dent on the car, was passing the car on the left, on the wrong side of the road, thinking the left turn signal was for the upcoming intersection rather than the garage entrance thirty feet before the intersection. Scooters often swerve around cars briefly to get to the front at traffic lights. In all of my motorcycle and bicycle accidents 

I have had the amazing good fortune not to hit anything solid: no cars, no curbstones, no iron poles along the edge of the sidewalk that prevent parking on the sidewalk in Paris. The unfortunate riders hit all of these. Worse, I did not see a helmet anywhere. 

As I walked away, a third ambulance pulled up. I think it was a fire department rescue team. Extracting that poor, broken woman from under the truck was going to be awful. 

I continued to walk on a beautiful night in the City of Light hoping the scooter riders would survive the night.

 

A Cathedral and a Holocaust Memorial Share the East End of an Island in Paris

The most famous Cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, sits the east end of the most famous island in the Seine River, il de la cite. 

The grand cathedral is currently in the midst of a many millions of Euros makeover. It will be closed for years.  

Behind the soaring cathedral on the very eastern tip of the island is the Holocaust Deportation Memorial. The entire memorial to the 200,000 Jews deported to death camps is underground. 

The entrance is a steep stone staircase down to an open area with a barred opening looking east along the Seine.  East is, of course, the direction of transport the victims took to their death.

For me, the beautiful view of the Seine through iron bars is what deportation would look like--passing through a beautiful countryside in a cage.

In the summer when the setting sun is north of west the shadow of the cathedral falls on the Holocaust memorial, not for long, just minutes.  I was overcome with sadness the first time I visited this memorial in 2017. I was in Paris in late June and early July and saw the shadow fall on the memorial after 9pm near sunset. During the Nazi era, 400 million Christian labeled people were either participants, complicit in or ignored the Holocaust. 

Inside the memorial is a map with the number of  Jews from each department deported to death camps.

The death camps are listed in blood red.

The barred opening seen from the north bank of the river is just a dark rectangle on a gray wall.

Another map shows all the Nazi camps to which people were sent to die.

IN the midst of the memorial is a flame of remembrance.

The view to the east up the Seine River is lovely.

The open courtyard of the memorial feels very vertical and forbidding.

Inside is a long tunnel with names of the victims.

Each time I visit Paris I visit the memorial to those deported. Usually there are just a few people inside.  

A few hundred meters away thousands are usually visiting Notre Dame.  Even now dozens of people were looking at the posters on the walls enclosing the cathedral during its restoration.