ENJOYING SOLITUDE AND OTHER PEOPLE ■ 1 89friends that most people feel they can let their hair down and be them
selves. Because we choose friends who share our ultimate goals, these are
the people with whom we can sing, dance, share jokes, or go bowling.
It is in the company of friends that we can most clearly experience the
freedom of the self and learn who we really are. The ideal of a modern
marriage is to have one’s spouse as a friend. In previous times, when
marriages were arranged for the mutual convenience of families, this was
considered an impossibility. But now that there are fewer extrinsic
pressures to get married, many people claim that their best friend is their
spouse.
Friendship is not enjoyable unless we take up its expressive chal
lenges. If a person surrounds himself with “friends” who simply reaffirm
his public persona, who never question his dreams and desires, who
never force him to try out new ways of being, he misses out on the
opportunities friendship presents. A true friend is someone we can
occasionally be crazy with, someone who does not expect us to be always
true to form. It is someone who shares our goal of self-realization, and
therefore is willing to share the risks that any increase in complexity
entails.
While families provide primarily emotional protection, friend
ships usually involve mysterious novelty. When people are asked about
their warmest memories, they usually remember holidays and vacations
spent with relatives. Friends are mentioned more often in contexts of
excitement, discovery, and adventure.
Unfortunately, few people nowadays are able to maintain friend
ships into adulthood. We are too mobile, too specialized and narrow in
our professional interests to cultivate enduring relationships. We are
lucky if we can hold a family together, let alone maintain a circle of
friends. It is a constant surprise to hear successful adults, especially
men—managers of large companies, brilliant lawyers and doctors—
speak about how isolated and lonely their lives have become. They recall
with tears in their eyes the good buddies they used to have in middle
school, even in high school, sometimes in college. All those friends have
been left behind, and even should they now meet again, they would
probably have very little in common, other than a few bittersweet
memories.
Just as with the family, people believe that friendships happen
naturally, and if they fail, there is nothing to be done about it but feel
sorry for oneself. In adolescence, when so many interests are shared with
others and one has great stretches of free time to invest in a relationship,
making friends might seem like a spontaneous process. But later in life