It is Good to Have Friends – An Apology

I reconnected with an old friend the other day.  We became really good friends at our workplace long ago, enjoyed each other’s company and the company of our spouses, and generally socialized together in a way that was pleasing to both couples.

We were never exactly on the same page politically, he tends to be more conservative than I, and I, of course, was slightly more liberal than he.  Typically, we did not have a lot of disagreements on foreign policy, but domestic policy proved to be a little less congenial.  This all started to come to a head in 2008 when Barack Obama ran for President.  Somehow, someway we became convinced of the other didn’t quite have the right view of America or what America needed.  This was exacerbated by the 2012 election and but then burst into full fruition when Trump was elected in 2016.  I  thought that he was either a tacit Trump supporter or so convinced, unfairly, that the Democrats were terrible for this country that he would vote for Trump (I have no idea how he actually voted).  He thought I was one of those liberals who couldn’t see the damage being done to our institutions by the far left.  My strong suspicion, looking back, is that we were both correct but I, at least, could not see it at the time.

I continued to send my friend my rants and blog posts.  He responded occasionally with some polite pushback.  Always respectful.  This time around, he indicated that he saw things the way I did.  That had happened often enough that I started thinking about my assumptions.

I discovered to my complete surprise that we agreed completely on what was happening in the world right and that we were very close to each other when it came to thinking about what was right and wrong.  So, we set up a zoom meeting.  I really enjoyed the time we spent together, and the fact that we planned to get together more often was unexpected and quite wonderful.  At my age men typically do not have that many good, close friends, people who understand you, and who you understand.  Well, let’s just say I know I do not have that many.  Friends where virtually any type of the conversation turns into a significant discourse or evokes a laugh.  I missed that with this friend.  I realized that I had been withdrawing from a relationship that I enjoyed for all the wrong reasons.  That was a mistake on my part.  One that I am in the process of correcting.

The lesson to myself is that anybody of good faith and intentions, with whom I share many experiences, and with whom I have been friends with for a considerable length of time, is unlikely to be that far away from my set of values and priorities.  We might disagree on some important things, and yes, it is inevitable that every once in a while we may get tangled up in nuances that seem to be more important than they actually end up being.  Making too much of that is an error.  

I did that, I made that error.  I’m the one who withdrew communication, and I was the one that thought more about our differences than our commonalities.  I was wrong. I owe my friend an apology.  Bob, this is it.