Underside of Friendship: Part 1

When I was in my mid-twenties I lived in Toronto and took the subway to and from work. One day, on my way home, I sat in one of the back-to-back seats that faced the rear of the train. Seated in front of me, in a bank of seats that lined the sidewall of the car, was a person I will never forget.

He was a burly, middle-aged man. If I had to guess, most of his working life had been spent doing heavy, physical labour outside. He was dressed in grey coveralls that zipped up in the front, wore steel-toed boots and sitting on his lap was a black utility-style lunchbox (one I imagined had a full-sized thermos snapped into the upper inner lid). He was covered head to toe in a thick coat of dirt or soot that was most obvious on his exposed hands and face. His presence had slid away from his massive frame in defeat; his gaze never left the floor, his dinner-plate sized hands didn’t move from his lunch box. What I remember the most clearly, were the tears that steadily streamed down his broad face leaving paths in the dirt on his checks. He wasn’t making a spectacle of himself or sobbing. He just continually, quietly cried.

My fairly carefree day shifted into the heavier place he occupied almost immediately; my chest felt like it might explode with grief. I wanted to reach out and hold this stranger’s hand but instead I watched, paralyzed. I didn’t feel like I needed to know the ‘why’ at the time although I have of course often wondered since. I wanted instead, more than anything, to communicate that I cared what was happening to him. I watched him but I didn’t move a muscle. No one else approached him either but I felt like everyone in that subway car had collectively stopped breathing.

I don’t know how many stops it took but eventually this crumbling mountain of a man, reached his destination, got up, shuffled out and I never saw him again.

In life and in friendship we so often have opportunities to participate in the intertwined beauty and fragility of others. Why might we be inclined to do nothing? To fix rather than ‘stand with’? Or to deny the present moment and replace it with a future that we have decided is the only way or a future as we wish it were?

Consider the times when you have chosen your own comfort over someone else’s reality.

When did you not act when you could have? When have you silenced another person through your indifference or with your well-meaning encouragement to ‘get on with things’ and to ‘look at the bright side’? What about when you may have used your own drama as a distraction?

Sometimes the reality of another person’s circumstances is big and heart-splintering. Other times the mundane aches and pains have built up over a lifetime. Either way, being seen as you truly are can be healing and being fully human requires an openness to a complete spectrum of experiences. We have a choice: we can hold onto our comfort and our story or we can show up for others inside their pain. Showing up might mean different things, maybe you are the shoulder, maybe you act as the seeker for a professional support system.

You are more likely to show up for others when you know how to show up for yourself

What happens when you are personally faced with difficult emotions? Do you battle and silence them? Do you brood and stay stuck inside your own story? Do you believe in a cultural narrative that says, ‘healthy and successful people are always happy’?

What if you stopped hassling with difficult emotions altogether and instead became curious about them? Allow them to be. Notice how they feel in your body. Honour them and listen to the information they provide. Difficult emotions are messengers. What is it they want to tell you? Pay attention.

Try this: Remind yourself every single day that you are a human being and that this body you are in is a temporary thing. This is useful information. Right now, place your hand on your own chest and feel your heart beating. Are you doing it? Notice the breath move in and move out. Don’t be in a hurry. As you read this, acknowledge that you are not in charge of your heart beating. You are not in charge of every breathe that moves in and out of your body. You don’t really have a direct say on how effectively your brain functions or if your liver will continue to be up to the task of its important work today. Come home to yourself like this often because the reminder that life is short is valuable in how you show up for what’s in front of you now. You are on borrowed time and so is your best friend, your parents, spouse, lover, children, coworkers, and the random man you might encounter on the subway.

Practice to reach across the divide you create within yourself. Find the tenderness in your own humanity, in your own grasping for joy and the fragile nature of things when joy is evasive. Practice to be with ‘what is’ so that you might also build the capacity to see others as they are. There is no reason why any of us need to be alone on a full train.