On Friends at Work
Most of the people we work with qualify - at best - as acquaintances. Sometimes we use the more sophisticated term, "colleagues," to describe them, but rarely do they approach the status of true friends. Of course, some of us do spend time outside work hours with our colleagues, and perhaps a real friendship can grow from such contact. For example, friends of ours had developed a relationship with a co-worker that lasted for many years, a relationship that became a friendship over time.
There's no "standard" definition of friend I'm familiar with, but I've always thought loyalty to be part of a good description, along with love. We may not tell our true friends we love them, but if they're more than passing fancies, if they've lasted as friends for a long time, wouldn't love be a component of the relationship?
While family really forms the rock solid foundation of those upon whom we can turn in a pinch, a true friend can also fill that role. A couple of my (very few) true friends have "been there" for us on more than one occasion. Indeed, I recently received a call letting me know they would likely need some help in the near future to help him with some domestic tasks requiring a strong back and arms. It was pleasing to know they could assume I'd "be there" for them.
Maybe we can sum all this up by saying that most co-workers, even those with whom we socialize from time to time, really don't qualify as true friends. The simple fact that most of us don't spend a lifetime in a single job, as we discussed last week, should temper the time we spend with most of those with whom we work. Further, in a rightly ordered world, family stands first in line for our undying love and loyalty, with true friends right behind.
Of course, nothing in this world lasts forever. Time and distance can cause us to grow apart from even the best of friends. But that doesn't change the fact that when we understand who are our real friends, we can treasure them all the more.
Msgr. Ronald Knox's description of friends captures all this in a much more complete and elegant fashion (as posted recently on Father Z's excellent blog):
There's no "standard" definition of friend I'm familiar with, but I've always thought loyalty to be part of a good description, along with love. We may not tell our true friends we love them, but if they're more than passing fancies, if they've lasted as friends for a long time, wouldn't love be a component of the relationship?
While family really forms the rock solid foundation of those upon whom we can turn in a pinch, a true friend can also fill that role. A couple of my (very few) true friends have "been there" for us on more than one occasion. Indeed, I recently received a call letting me know they would likely need some help in the near future to help him with some domestic tasks requiring a strong back and arms. It was pleasing to know they could assume I'd "be there" for them.
Maybe we can sum all this up by saying that most co-workers, even those with whom we socialize from time to time, really don't qualify as true friends. The simple fact that most of us don't spend a lifetime in a single job, as we discussed last week, should temper the time we spend with most of those with whom we work. Further, in a rightly ordered world, family stands first in line for our undying love and loyalty, with true friends right behind.
Of course, nothing in this world lasts forever. Time and distance can cause us to grow apart from even the best of friends. But that doesn't change the fact that when we understand who are our real friends, we can treasure them all the more.
Msgr. Ronald Knox's description of friends captures all this in a much more complete and elegant fashion (as posted recently on Father Z's excellent blog):
And even with the friendships we make later in life, founded not on accidental association, but on a real community of tastes and interests, how seldom they last a lifetime, or anything like a lifetime! Destiny shuffles our partners for us; one friend or the other gets a different job, goes to live somewhere else; it may only mean changing from one suburb to another, but how easily we make an excuse of distance! More and more as we grow older, we find that the people we see most of are recent acquaintances, not (perhaps) very congenial to us, but chance has thrown them in our way. And meanwhile the people we used to know so well, for whom we once entertained such warm feelings, are now remembered by a card at Christmas, if we can succeed in finding the address. How good we are at making friends, when we are young; how bad at keeping them! How eagerly, as we grow older, we treasure up the friendships that are left to us, like beasts that creep together for warmth!
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