An Honest Friend

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
     Robert Louis Stevenson

We want to be really personal today. This post is about our relationship and how we hope we are modeling honesty and friendship for others.

Over the last few years our friendship has taken on a whole new level. We started out a relationship where Michael played the role of a mentor. But over time, and many, many hours of talking and sharing, growing to know one another, our relationship evolved into something much more—a true friendship. No longer was one of us, because of age and experience there to guide the other who was younger and just starting out. But it became a welcome surprise when no longer was just the student learning from the mentor, but the mentor was learning from the student. To (my) Michael’s delight and surprise I began to realize that Tom was willing to be a friend to someone of an older generation. And I (Tom) felt the same in knowing that Michael wanted to be his friend, too.

What really caused our friendship to progress to a whole new level was the level of honesty and openness we expressed towards one another. We remember a specific watershed night very vividly. It was Dec. 23, 2010. The place was the Hotel Hershey, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We started our meeting like we had started every meeting for the two years prior. I (Tom), in essence, unloaded the burdens I was feeling in my job and personal life. Michael listened intently, creating a safe place free of condemnation and judgment. Maybe it was the holiday spirit, but that night I felt a need to allow Michael to share more with me so I started asking questions that probed deeper into his life, experiences and feelings. To my delight and surprise, Michael was very willing to be open with me and to share things that we had never shared with anyone before. We both identified that as a moment when our relationship deepened exponentially; it was on that night, at that moment, that we established a greater depth, an implicit trust, a revealing vulnerability, and a connection that has only grown much deeper from there.

Why is it that we often hold back our feelings, thoughts, emotions and fears from one another? It was actually liberating for us that night to open up. It was a true Christmas gift to be so emotionally unashamed with one another. Is it human nature to internalize too much, our feelings, fears and frustrations? Even in our own relationship we have from time to time taken stock of where we are, and of our trust, and have needed to encourage one another to not be afraid to be open, to be vulnerable, and to be real—to know that we don’t need to hide. There have been times, we have discovered, that we have been reluctant to share our fears for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s been out of habit; as men we are conditioned to ‘hold it in’, to be ‘tough’, to not show ‘weakness’. Sometimes we have been embarrassed to express raw emotions or feelings because we are afraid the other won’t respect us—our people-pleasing tendencies stand in the way—cause us to want to be liked too much or for each other to be content—and we don’t unveil ourselves as much as we could. And that is to our detriment.

Just today we took some time to take stock. I (Tom) asked Michael how he was feeling about the work we’ve been doing together and the pace of the progress we’ve made. Michael’s response surprised me – and actually surprised him too. When he declared that he was waking up many nights and struggling to get back to sleep, I was taken aback by his admission of his fear that our financial needs won’t be met as we develop this non-profit. Michael had never opened up so strongly about that before. That necessitated an intense and heartfelt discussion about trusting one another enough to share fears such as that, to be able to allow the burdens to be carried together and not simply alone.

To know as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote – that as we travel this road together, the more honest, open and vulnerable with each other the less the treacherous, scary and lonely the wilderness will be – is a very freeing understanding, indeed.