- Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness in much vexation and sickness and anger. -
I’m not a very social person. Even as a young child, I would prefer getting a good night’s sleep than staying up late with my friends at sleepovers.
In many ways, I enjoyed getting up before them all the next morning. It was my time, and I used it to play a video game, talk with an adult over breakfast, or read my Bible.
All that depended on how mature I decided to be that day.
I’ve never liked crowds. I do not like parties. I do not like making small talk, though I do recognize its purpose and usefulness.
A perfect weekend for me is staying at home working on some chores and spending most of the day in an obscure book. (By the way, if you haven’t read the Kalevala, I highly recommend it.)
Why go on about my anti-social behavior? What has this to do with our verse?
Well, despite my old-man-curmudgeon ways, I love people. Friendship takes on many forms, some more recognizable than others.
Women engage in what I like to think of as cooperative friendships. These are relationships concerned with understanding what is going on in a person’s life for the sake of empathy.
These relationships can get hacked by antisocial women, who use gossip to injure others or even share personal truths from their conversations.
Men’s relationships act in a different matter. They are almost at all times competitive friendships, even when a game is not being played.
Typically, these relationships form around a hobby, such as a video game or a sport. Constantly, they vie for position within the activity, using each other as tools to grow.
Even when men aren’t doing anything, they compete through humor. They try to find the funniest joke that will double over everyone else or come up with the cleverest insult that stumps their peers.
Why do we do it? Why the need for others?
At times, life can be so hard that we just need someone to double check us, to make sure our thoughts match reality.
That sanity check can restore us not by fixing the problem, but by letting us know that our perception and experience map onto reality.
At other times, they we’ll see something in our life, either by experience or being partially removed from the events, that allows them to speak new direction into our life.
In many ways, its these conversations and ability to have them that define friends and family.
What does the man have who did his best to hold onto riches to his own hurt?
He eats in darkness. No one brings him a candle. He likes it that way, thank you very much.
His stomach is full of ulcers and he’s furious with God for it all. He is so far gone, he cannot imagine wishing for a friend to sit down with him and talk.
If you have a friend or family who will come to you in your time of need, you are blessed. Undoubtedly, you are blessed beyond riches.
Nothing makes me feel so whole as to sit with someone else who sees truth, is infilled with God’s Spirit, and speaks in a manner of faith.
Nothing they say is new to them. Nothing they say is news to God. My favorite moments are when its nothing new to me.
In that moment, my spirit unites with their own in a harmony I await to hear in heaven.
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