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Dalton
Roberts |
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A friend sent me a quote from Wayne Dyer that gave me a great chuckle: “Friends are God’s way of saying ‘I’m sorry about your relatives.’” It is a wonderful tribute to friendship as well as a sensible recognition of the limitations of family. A friend was telling me in the afterlife the family is an eternal thing and I said, “There are people in my family I cannot stand and I sure don’t want to spend eternity with them.” When my brother was four and I was eight, a thirteen-year-old cousin lined us up against the wall and tried to see how close he could come to our ears with steel-pointed darts. When he got old enough to drink, he became even worse. With him around, I would not feel safe walking the golden streets even if he listened to David play his harp and thousands of angels sing for a million years. Every person ever born has had a major problem with some member of the family. If you accept the biblical story of creation, right there in the first family there was a wife carrying on with a snake, a husband blaming his sin on his wife, and a brother killing a brother. It makes my cousin’s dart-throwing look a lot less chilling. If you don’t accept the biblical story, you can take no comfort in evolution. If it took us thousands of years to invent a powder to thin out the fleas on our hides, you can imagine how long it took to stop early homo sapiens from dropping rocks on their neighbor’s heads when they got in a fuss over who owned a cave. Right here in Tennessee a few years ago an idiot dropped a rock on a car and paralyzed a lady passenger. We’ve come so far It is no wonder we go outside the family and seek safety in friends. Look up any family tree and you will find a lunatic or two. Maybe a lecherous uncle you can never trust around the children. Even those who are not dangerous can make you go in search of a 15 milligram Valium when they come around, like an aunt who wipes off every doorknob you touch as you walk around the house. Forgetting safety, it is often difficult to find basic compatibility among our kin. Sometimes we cannot even beg, borrow or steal a few minutes of simple fellowship with those we like the most. There is a tragic kink in the human brain that tells us our loved ones will be around forever and there’s no need to rush to show them a little affection. It is enough to drone out a little “I love you” at the end of a phone call even though you don’t think of the meaning of a single syllable of what you have just said. I once heard a grown son gibber out an “I love you” to a mother he had called a few days before and cursed viciously. Am I denying family values? No, I am not. I see father, mother and children as the fundamental social brick of society. We all need to do everything in our power to make this social foundation work. We also need to be aware that it will not work perfectly no matter how hard we work at it. Father, mother and children cannot always meet our needs. We may even have to hide from father, mother or children to be safe or hide the steel-pointed darts when they come around. We may have to seek safety and compatibility in our friends. It is my happy discovery that every need in our heart, mind and soul not being fulfilled by family members can be met partially or wholly through a circle of good friends. They are not hard to find. Just be a friend and notice those who respond. It really is that simple.
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