FRIENDSHIPS ARE EXHAUSTING. I came to understand how satisfying
my own personal indifference to other people really was. Since they were only digital and our relationships were digital, I truly believed that they didn’t feel a thing. I killed them all. I haven’t looked at anything online in a year, and I haven’t missed it a bit. Here is a simple test of friendship. There are friends you would call to come over and split pizza and a six-pack with you; there are friends you would ask to help you move; and then there are friends you would call at 1:00 am to bring a truck, two shovels, and no questions. That last category probably has no more than one or two friends in it. Those one or two friends are not tourists. They are real friends. I don’t think there are many, if any, people who are with you for your entire life, except your family. Make a list of the close people in your life who fit into your very regular life and are close to you. For a lot of reasons, people move in and out of your life. They are tourists for you, and you are tourists for them. That doesn’t mean that you do not care about them or their affection for you is false. It just means that in this life we share journeys for a period, move apart and start new journeys. Social media creates a spiderweb of connectivity—even connection— that passes for intimacy. You feel like you have a lot of friends, and they feel the same in return. You go on vacations together, follow relationships, share movies, favorite books, political opinions, and of course, pictures of foods and pets. There are pictures, comments, and responses. You do
this with a lot of people regularly. You share life through social media. It’s almost like you are there. This connectedness creates a blurry shadow of what relationships are. In the physical world, I think life tourists are great. You talk about your experiences and create new experiences. You hang out, do things, meet other new people and this can last. Some of these relationships last for months and others for years and years, but drift is a natural occurrence. Someone moves or there is a new spouse/job/child/something, and time together gets smaller. Not bad. Life happens. Journeys with other people are great. Those journeys are not all about entertainment, they are about friendship and love and sometimes service. We help and serve each other. Just know that the journey will probably change, and recognize it as a natural part of any journey—that’s how journeys are. I think there are some things good to remember as you journey: LIARS ARE LIARS If you find someone who lies to you, they are a liar.
Period. LOVE IS SHARED You can’t love one-way, that’s obsession or addiction.
You cannot be loved by someone you do not love. That creates negative feelings of stalking and resentment. NO VAMPIRES The emotional needy who suck out life and give none
back. KEEP THE BEST The best relationships are worthy of lifetime contact.
Keep those. TIME IS PRECIOUS Choose. At some point as you meet people, you
will need to choose whether to invest more in that relationship or not. Choose and do. One of my friends is an example. We were thick as thieves from seventh grade through high school. Had a ton of fun, doubled down on
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all the high school trouble that you could get into. Probably one of my best friends. We went off to college and lost touch. We’d catch up in the summers, but we were seasonal friends. Always close, picking up like no time had passed, just not in each other’s day-to-day. After college, we moved in with another friend and lived as a trio for a couple of years. I moved, they moved. We were all friends, but life moved. I got ready to get married and I toasted at his wedding and he at mine. Fifteen years of close friendship, lots of experiences—laughs, history, escapes and neardeath moments. Irreplaceable. We haven’t talked in a couple of decades. Did we fall out? Are we angry? No, not at all. We moved, drifted, shifted, and started different journeys. Going back to those other times is impossible. We started by being those people, but we are not those people any more. I love this guy and I always will. There is nothing wrong in understanding that almost everyone in your life is a tourist for a time, even fifteen years. Tourist doesn’t mean indifferent. I used to think I had no friends, then lots of friends, then I didn’t know. Once I understood that everyone was having their own journey, and I was walking with them on my journey some of the time and not on the same journey at other points, it made trades easier. I can be friendly with all, tourists with many, friends with fewer, and life travelers with very, very few. It was no longer a one-or-the-other separation. That gave me better trades. My dad once said, “Family is the only thing that you can truly count on; everyone else, in the end, leaves.” To say the least, he’s not the guy who is asked to cheer up kids with balloon animals and magic tricks. His point comes from a huge belief in our family: make time for family. We have a great family. We love each other, we tease, we laugh, argue, gossip, bicker, talk about weight, politics, and religion. We’re loud when we eat and louder when we drink. Whatever happens, we make time for family. I’m not telling you how to do you. I’m telling you that you need to build a family and then make time for it. A dear friend next door has no living family but her children. She has built a family of other very special families that she has truly invested in to make them her family. She truly has Li fe To u ri sts
a family, not just tourists. Making time for whatever version of family you have is a great trade. For me, the trades have been the better understanding of who people are and why God has brought us together at a particular time in each other’s lives. The trade makes it easier when life pulls us apart to not be hurt or misunderstand the nature of the journey. The trade helps me to richly value my family and the very few life travelers gifted to me by God. The points are all easy to spot in this chapter. It needs no clever ending.
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