The word friend means a lot of things these days. And who knows?
Maybe it’s me. This could be true.
Maybe definitions change as time goes by. Or perhaps words take on new meanings, which is fine. No really, it is.
I think that everything we encounter in life will need to be reevaluated or updated.
But friends?
I suppose we look for different qualities. I doubt the things I looked for in my friends as a kid are all the same as what I look for in a friend now.
However –
I remember when the word friend meant something different, I remember how the word friend implied the interactive nature and the back-and-forth support of someone who knows you best and also instinctively; a friend is the one who understands without the need for an explanation.
This is the person who fits or who gets it.
No one is counting the kindness or the generosity or comparing to who paid for lunch the last time.
These days, the word friend is somehow offered and described as people who are linked to a social media account which, again, I get that all things can, will, do and must change.
But friends?
Does this have to change too?
I understand that times are different. However, I think I like my version of the word friend better than what I see now which is a disconnected name who only appears to me on a social media feed.
That’s not a friend.
That’s not even an acquaintance.
I think friends are supposed to be real – or if anything, I think a friend is someone who does not embellish or exaggerate their photographs with filters to change their appearance.
No, there’s no need for this.
I get it.
No, I really do.
The filters, I mean.
I have always been uncomfortable in photographs. I’m insecure about my smile or the fact that one of my eyes is shaped slightly different from the other. One of my ears is shaped differently as well, which is something to laugh about, although not literally because these are real to me, no one is really taking the time to zoom in to see if my eyes are shaped the same. No one cares if my ears are alike. No one is calculating my smile and filing my pictures in their mental file cabinet, as if to document or write this down as if to say, specifically, “I saw Ben Kimmel in a photograph on Saturday morning, at approximately 9:09 a.m., and far be it from me to judge, but I saw several imperfections in the way he looks.
I really doubt anyone thinks this way.
But this is not about pictures or insecurities.
No, this is about people who bring out the best in us.
Our friends.
This is about people who inspire smiles or who cause motivation to go, be or do. This is about the connection we share as a result of the world somehow putting us together as two people in the same crazy place, and for whichever reason, or as fate may have it – somehow, the vibes and the connection, the laughs and the ability to coincide and find a sense of companionship, loyalty and fearless comfort between us is undeniably the most underrated and unspoken mathematical (and chemical) phenomenon in the world.
This has to be the most overlooked miracle we see.
Not everyone vibes or connects or fits well together. However, when it comes to our friends or at least when it comes to the right friends, as in the true ones, as in the ride or die friends or the ones who stand behind you when you’re weak, so you’ll never fall, and the ones who can hold your confidence and keep your secrets as safety as they keep their own – even despite moments of trials or arguments between you; these are the people who matter the most.
They are the ones who will always come through.
This is about the people who can help without saying a word. And yes, they’re out there.
Real friends. Real people.
They are the people who look to be there and help and more importantly, these are the people who we will connect to the best times of our lives.
I know about the good times. I know all about the crazy times. I know all about the wild rooftop sessions and the crazy nights which we swore we would never forget or hoped that times like this would live forever. And they do live forever – in our mind, at least.
Friends on social media are not the same as the real live moments and events that changed or shook the world, or made us laugh so long and so hard that we woke up the next morning, almost hungover, as if we were freely drunk for the moment and free enough to run around the world.
Nothing virtual can offer this level of reality.
I have friends who I will never forget and friends who have fallen. I have friends who have taken on the world and created a great life for themselves. I have friends who know things, like deep things or crazy things and, of course, there are people in my life who know the real things and the unspoken things, which only exist between us – and yes, I have friends who I associate with a more wild and tragic side of my life – and some of them are in places where barred doors line the walls and guards walk the corridors.
And I say this to them
Bless you.
Some of my friends wear suits and ties and they carry brief cases – and I laugh too because we talk about the crazy antics from our past. We laugh about the tattoos beneath the suit, which no one in the boardrooms know about, but if they did or if they only knew a fraction of our history – man, the change that we’d see in our treatment is enough to make me shake my head – or when someone speaks as though they’re tough, I laugh and think, “Gotta lotta guts . . .”
I think that life needs to be more real and less virtual.
I think that human contact is as necessary as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we need to survive.
Oh, and as for food, I say this all the time too, but this needs to be said here as well:
Food is love.
Hands down. Absolutely.
Food is the most connecting thing we can share with someone – to break bread, to eat until our bellies are full, or to have Tacos or murder burgers or anything like that, or to try new things on the menu and to feel so satisfied that ah, nothing could erase this from our memory.
This is what friends do too.
I know that times have changed and perhaps so has the definition of the word friendship. However, moments make memories and if it were not for the moments in my life and my memories of being so crazy and wild, or laughing or dancing, or daring the dawn, like we did when we were young – I know my life would be as tasteless as muted nature of a flavorless meal.
I view the details of my life and say that this is my salt and pepper. This is the seasoning of my life which, without this, my life would be bland or tasteless or otherwise lifeless and wasted like a bowl of day-old oatmeal.
Who the hell wants that?
Who wants a flavorless life?
Not me.
I know what a friend is.
I know what a friend “isn’t” as well.
A friend does not threaten or make you question yourself in a bad way, or put you down, or keep you down (just so they can feel better about themselves) and yes, a real friend is the one who cheers for your success, regardless of whether your success is far greater or less than theirs.
There is no subject of comparison.
A real friend is the one who is going to make sure you understand your worth and value.
This is what a real friend does.
There will be laughs and times of serious conversation. There will be memories. There will be moments that need to be documented somehow, so we can make them last forever.
Believe me.
Friends will not prey on insecurity or depend on your weaknesses, just in case, they need a special boost to feel better – and albeit rare or true or far and few in-between, real friends are limited to the blessing of a small few.
I have these friends – a small few.
And that’s perfect.
And love?
Or the one you love?
As in the total package –
Yes. This person has to be your best friend.
This is the person who lights the fire. This is the one who sends your rockets out of the atmosphere and boom, like a series of bursts and Roman candles and explosions of color from the rockets in the sky on 4th of July, I swear that the love of your life can do this for you.
More accurately to me, the love of my life is all of this and more.
This is the person who I can be myself with and not be shy.
I can be me. . .
And I mean this in every sense of the word.
I mean this, authentically and intimately, physically and spiritually.
This is a different kind of best friend. This is the person who is more than just the ride or die, and more than your co-pilot or companion. This is more than anything else in the world because while intimacy is shared in different degrees or at different levels, I can see no other person in the world who is like this. There is no duplicate or comparison. There is only one person in the world who can hold this position in your life – so, please, be mindful of this.
Do not waste your time, your energy, or the value of this connection because it takes a lifetime to find this one, most special person – and should you lose them as a result of your own misgivings or insecure notions, fears or irrational ideas that consume your best thinking, then understand that you run the risk of losing your most special and very best friend, forever.
Trust me . . .
You don’t want to let this happen.
I say that a lot. Don’t I?
Trust me . . .
Perhaps I say this because I have experienced loss and losses and yes, I have devalued and degraded great moments and great people and due to my own shortcomings, I have mistreated the people I love the most. I’ve done wrong, like what Milky said about what he did to his friend Woody, and I use this as an inside joke – and I say this with a special thank you to Shane Meadows because of his creation called “This is England.”
This creation has done more for me than anyone could imagine.
I offer this outwardly and honestly.
I hold myself accountable for this and to be truthful, I understand that if I fail to change then my life will never change – not at all.
No, it will be the lives around me that change and once more, I’ll be that kid who searches for his crowd, missing like a man without a homeland or wishes he was able to go back or turn around and undo or unsay things that were unbecoming of my love and friendship.
Friends . . .
This is more important than a list of names on our social media account.
More important than this, there is going to come a time in your life when you meet your own most special person. This is the one who is more than a friend and more than a love – this will be your dream come true.
Find this.
Hold this.
Do ever let go.
Life can be a great thing
And so can love.
Both will come with their ups and downs but same as life is meant to be lived, love is meant to be loved – not wasted or misused or forgotten or abandoned or squandered or silenced or sent away to an unknown place of a stale existence, where life is flat as ever, as if life has no curve nor contour or flavor to remember.
Do not allow your life to become so one-dimensional that everything is only virtual or lost without the visceral experience of touch.
You want this. You want to touch life and feel it.
Enjoy it.
We all need the experience of finding love, feeling fine and having the times of our lives.
Do not guard yourself so much that you hold yourself for ransom – and do not allow yourself to live a life that is untested or untouched.
Eat the rice. Taste the treats.
Go to the places that fill your heart.
Order something good from Scalinatella on 61st Street.
Find your crowd. Live, love, laugh and learn.
Do not stop this.
Not once.
Not ever.
But oh, just between us kids in the sandbox, if you can or if you find your love or that most special person; whenever possible, find a rooftop somewhere down by where the weather is warm and the sun is strong. This could be where the palm trees sway. Call it South somewhere, by the beach for example.
Find a spot or a place or a moment in time where no one else is around like by a pool on the roof of some mild hotel, which is otherwise free from prying eyes; and if you can or if you’re not afraid to pull off a trick – try and sneak some love by doing something that you know you’re not supposed to – but you do and you did it anyway, just to put it in the books, or just to say that “we did it there too!”
When the times come or when you find yourself in need of the wind to blow away the cobwebs of a lonely or a sad moment – think back to the time when the world was yours and you were unafraid to make love anywhere or at any given moment – at least once, just to say you “did it there” and got it in.
I am no guru nor do I offer advice by any means.
However, the best way to share life is to offer some examples of our own.
Hence, these are mine.
I am not sure if I’m right or wrong about anything.
However, I do know what the word friendship means.
I also know that real friends inspire real life.
And love, this is what saves our life from the ashes of true boredom or a flavorless life that goes unlived.
I would live to be this kind of savior –
To inspire your smile.
To offer a hand to shake or hold, a shoulder to lean on, and an ear to listen.
To be that person
as in, your person –
. . . . if you’ll have me, that is.
The Written Addiction 