Make friends who don’t see you as a professional object

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It makes me feel good when a person I meet for the first time recognizes me as a columnist for The Atlantic rather than as some random guy—but can easily become a barrier to the formation of healthy friendships, which we all need. By self-objectifying in your friendships, you can make it easier for your friends to objectify you.

This is why having friends outside your professional circles is so important. Striking up friendships with people who don’t have any connection to your professional life encourages you to develop nonwork interests and virtues, and thus be a fuller person. The way to do this goes hand in hand with recommendation No. 1: Don’t just spend time away from work; spend it with people who have no connection to your work. 

You are not your job, and I am not mine. Take your eyes off the distorted reflection, and have the courage to experience your full life and true self.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

Renewal and Friendship

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The self-renewing man has mutually fruitful relations with other human beings. They are capable of accepting love and capable of giving it – both more difficult achievements than is commonly thought. And what has that to do with self-renewal? The man or woman who is incapable of accepting love or of giving it is imprisoned, cut off from a great part of the world of experience. Love and friendship dissolve the rigidities of the isolated self, force new perspectives, alter judgments, and keep in working order the emotional substratum on which all profound comprehensive of human affairs must rest.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

These people are your real friends

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As we grow up, we realize it becomes less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones. Remember, life is kind of like a party. You invite a lot of people, some leave early, some stay all night, some laugh with you, some laugh at you, and some show up really late. But in the end, after the fun, there are a few who stay to help you clean up the mess. And most of the time, they aren’t even the ones who made the mess. These people are your real friends in life. They are the ones who matter most.

Marc & Angel Chernoff, 20 Things to start doing in your relationships

Making friends

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We picture lovers face to face but friend side by side, their eyes looking ahead. That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends. Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing, those who are going no where can have no fellow-travelers.

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

Climb Down & Sit with Them

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The hardest habit for me to break was the instinct to turn the conversation round to the positive. It took a while for me to understand that if a friend is in a dark place, the most compassionate thing we can do is to climb down into that place and sit with them for a while. “If a person trusts you enough to talk about their distress, trying to cheer them up is like shutting them up – you are dismissing and trivialising their feelings. Give them the space to say how bad they feel and stay with it. Swerving away from it, talking about a silver lining, can signal you don’t want to hear it.” Focus on your friend and their words. Thinking too much about your responses can be detrimental. “I make a constant effort to calm my mind down and tune into what is being said.”

Moya Sarner writing in The Guardian

Spiritual Friendship

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Spiritual friends aren’t looking to get ahead. This friend weeps with you in anxiety, rejoices with you in prosperity, seeks with you in doubts. Nothing is faked; everything is in the open. A relationship that grows into something holy, voluntary, and true is one of life’s greatest pleasures and a reward in itself. It’s a “wondrous consolation” to have someone in whom your spirit can rest, to whom you can simply pour out your soul. 

Karen Wright Marsh, Vintage Saints and Sinners