Drink umbrellas, friends, and guilt

You wanna hear something funny? At the Tonga Room last night, Shanti and I were talking about something that made me start to cry. As a brief aside, this is not such an unusual occurrence these day; however, I was on my third tropical cocktail. I opened my purse to get a tissue so I didn’t end up with raccoon eyes. Low and behold, the bag is filled with drink umbrellas.

I’ve been collecting drink umbrellas for a few years now. The idea is that I am going to make art out of them. Maybe in the form of a chicken. I also collect beer coasters and match books, but I have no grand plans for them. So, I guess, at some point I am going to have to stop the umbrella collection. Or stop drinking tropical drinks. Or die. Who knows?

Just before this, I was giving this guy, Lee, a hard time. He’s the Bay Trail Planner with ABAG, and I noticed no one was talking to him. So, I approached him with my question du jour, which is about friendship.

It all began earlier this week with a conversation I had with someone I met online. I posed my 3 to 6 bestfriends theory, and defined a best friend as someone you 1) could call in the middle of the night, even if you never do, 2) make an effort to spend quality time with at regular intervals, and 3) is local. Bestfriends can include the person you sleep with and family members that meet the criteria. My online friend said that this was a gendered view, and that men would never call each other in the middle of the night. He said men don’t talk with each other about feelings even if they do talk with their female friends about feelings.

Thus, the question I was soliciting input on from the men of the group was: how do you define a bestfriend without gender bias? Lee would have none of this. He said a bestfriend is defined by a feeling, not an action. I’ll agree that I have stronger feelings for some of my friends than others and it doesn’t have anything to do with how long we’ve been friends. However, I do think that all this manifests itself in at least some quantifiable things. The trick is to find them.

The group last night also specifically rejected definition #3, is local. But I hold fast to that one bc the main goal is developing a system thru which your emotional needs are met. I believe that that can only happen with physical presence. They did, however, offer an additional possible measurement: people who have your housekeys.

People generally get keys to my home either bc they need them for some reason or because they live nearby (in case I lose mine). The group suggested that one can choose bestfriends by proximity as well. But I’m still thinking about that – it’s seems hard enough just to connect with people let alone to also require that they live near you….

Later in the evening, another subset of our group discussed guilt. This came up bc I like to give something up for Lent or Yom Kippur or Ramadan. I’m not picky which one. I was just asking which was next. Jeremy got all worked up in a lather about how guilt is this stupid catholic thing and the world should be ridded of it. It was cute.

The thing is, tho, that I don’t really have a relationship with guilt. I could be deep in denial, but I think I almost never feel guilty. I almost never do anything that’s worth feeling guilty about. The only thing I could think of was hurting people’s feelings.

“When have YOU ever hurt anyone’s feelings, Lilia?” Jeremy replied with force. He must think that bc I am such a nice person – it’s not possible that he thinks no one is ever emotionally invested enough in me for me to be able to hurt them. It’s been a little while since I hurt anyone’s feelings, but I do still feel bad about it. The trick is to do it as honorably and with as much grace as you can. (Neat trick.)

“But what about the way you live your life” Hope suggested. For example, they explained together, our friend Forest has invested in uranium; nuclear is coming back. Apparently, he’s made a lot of money, but he still feels guilty about it. I feel guilty for not composting or buying organic produce. Yeah, not quite the same thing, but it is the way I live my life and the way he lives his.

I would love to be able to say that the trick is simply to not do things that you’re going to feel guilty about. But at what cost? I mean, I’m not willing to give up trying to be better in order to give up guilt. It’s a cost-benefit analysis (like all things). I get more out of trying to be a better person than I suffer as a result of being aware that I’m not perfect.

Did I say that? Please don’t tell anyone. Instead take this with you: my friends are great.