How do we make friends? Especially in a city notorious for cold unfriendly introverts such as Vancouver. I imagine that there would be webpages online specifically for platonic friendship. I just looked at the first three I found on Google. The first is from an evangelical Christian denomination so there likely is an agenda; the second is for women only, neither feminist nor lesbian; the third is really a dating site.
What is wrong with this picture? Women don't seem to have a problem or a social deficit about platonic same-sex friendship. What is wrong with the men? And for that matter what about the church that tries to lure new members by playing on their loneliness and social neediness? There are of course many other social websites and they generally are of the Meet Up variety, where strangers meet together out of common interests and/or ... passions? (Oh, do get your mind out of the gutter, please, Gentle Reader!)
For me, making new friends has at times been a huge challenge as I believe it has been for a lot of you. I have been in embarrassing states of need, seeking, alienating, frightening away or burning out perfectly innocent parties. And vice-versa. Almost, but never quite approaching near strangers or kind acquaintances asking plaintively and pathetically "Will you be my friend?" I have sometimes sought friendship in church, but the mix of people in places of worship is, to put it mildly, very uneven socially, especially in the Anglican Church, where the very idea of so much as having a cup of coffee in a café with anyone who isn't being paid to be there is considered near-apostasy. Yet three of my current long term friends (and a potential fourth if he hasn't dumped me along with his girlfriend-you both know who you are should you be reading this little bit of gentle prose-I have met in church or in religious organizations. We seemed to somehow gravitate together and after a few months of being in each other's presence decided that we really were worth knowing.
Others are people I have met online through a language exchange site. They are all people from Latin America and Spain, since it is Spanish that I am working with while helping them with their English. This has turned into, for me, a particularly rewarding and enjoyable way of making new friends. I think that at its best this kind of exchange really brings out the best in people and this also is a perfect vehicle for beginning and developing new friendships. I have friends because of this webpage in Vancouver and in at least a half dozen different countries.
I still think that it is possible to make friends randomly though this is something one should never try to force at the risk of coming across as a needy little creep. I try to keep myself in an open potential friend kind of mode when I am out in public. This isn't always easy and sometimes it's downright impossible. Especially when everyone around me appears to be behaving like a self-absorbed douchebag. Still I try to stay open, even if it means only holding a door open for a stranger or listening to someone sitting next to me on a bus or sharing a joke with another customer or worker in a café. Sometimes things will just connect and after repeated exposure we end up talking a bit more, for longer periods, more enjoyably. At one point one gives the other their contact information. Sometimes someone will call or write. Sometimes not. But we still have to stay open because to remain hermetically sealed inside ourselves is tantamount to chronic and permanent soul death.
There is also volunteer work. It isn't a guarantee of friendship but neither is friendship itself a guarantee. It is never a right, always a privilege. If we can get away from a consumer mentality about friendship and approach others more out of a sense of disinterested love and a desire to summon forth their better angels then I think that we will find ourselves a little bit less alone in the world. And a little bit less lonely, Gentle Reader.
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