Friendship Tiers

 

I have thought about friendship a bunch over the past couple of years. I am of the opinion that people have three levels of friendship: primary, secondary, tertiary. Primary should be self-explanatory-best friends, basically. Secondary are those you want to be with when able, but not those that you need share every innermost thought, or feel a sense of loss if they are not in your life continually. Tertiary friends provide services that are agreeable and helpful, but they serve a purpose primarily. Most people only have a few primary friends, and a handful (or lots more) secondary friends. Tertiary friends are those that are turned to when useful, and then put aside until the need to have them around again re-arises.

Primary friends are those that need not be in your life each and every day; when in your presence, though, it is as though you have never been apart. Things just pick up same as the last time you were together. These people are precious, valued, treasured and important to you.

Secondary level friends are perhaps a step below those in the top tier, or even steps below. These are the people who you are glad to see when they walk into the room, people you want to sit with and catch up if you have not seen them in a bit. When they leave your life, though, it is not a cause for lamentation or despondency; if they will be back in your circle sooner or later, that is just fine. You enjoy their presence but are not torn up when they are not nearby. These are the people you invite to parties, gravitate toward when you are in social situations together, share details about your life and inquire about their lives in return. Need a fourth for golf-call a secondary friend. Since you probably only have a few primary friends in your life, you spend a good deal of your free time with those who comprise this tier. You enjoy their presence in your daily life; you do not crave their company, simply find it enjoyable to be with them in most situations.

Tertiary friends are utilized as they frequently serve a purpose, provide a specific benefit for you. They are not the people you consider when putting together a social event. Need a ride somewhere, or want to borrow some cash for a short period, these are the people you turn to. A tertiary friend is not one you immediately consider as a companion for times of relaxation or recreation; as noted, these people have utility as their primary attribute and aspect. They are not disagreeable, but you do not open up to them as you would a primary or perhaps a secondary friend.

 

©Ivar G. Anderson August 24, 2023

Walking with Selene

 

I once thought maybe you loved me

But I now know that to be untrue.

I walk among the moonbeams,

Confiding to Selene

My best kept secrets.

I reflect on that gossamer thread

You use to stay connected to me

Thin and delicate,

Easy to sever and dissolve.

Your canards may be spoken

To soothe your sense of remembrance,

Reassure your conscience

That you are still available

When the genuine veracity

Is that my presence has long been forsaken

For other pathways and diversions

I recall your avatar fondly

But realize that the night is no place

For the day’s eyes to persist

Those hide amongst Selene’s radiance

As you have secreted yourself from my realm

Any argument that the brief incursions you deign to bestow

Demonstrate a willingness to resume what had been

Are purely mythological, at best.

It is in action we discern the veracity of intention,

Or by lack of action, an aim is revealed.

© Ivar G. Anderson June 1, 2022

Shelter

I

Apologies to Bernie and Elton, but hoping you don’t mind 

My intentions to explain how wonderful life was when you were in my world 

I am not a roof sitter, nor is there any moss growing here for me to abuse, 

But I will confess A bit of ire arising as I pen these words; 

Inessential expressions to be misunderstood 

By most and many, yet digressions that pull themselves free 

To find the paper of temporary transport. 

It is not that we have so short a time to live, but that we waste much of it; 

Still, I bear the burden of realizing you are all the things I must remember 

Even as you shy away, drift ever further off 

The thoughtful imaging of an Elvis triggers questions 

And understanding that I know it isn’t me 

That engenders those previous expressed ideals. 

The occasional lament of “distance” 

Seems to smack of self-delusion 

After all, whose decision was the impetus? 

The creating of the non-us? 

The sense of core unity 

Has been replaced with a sense 

Of valence electron status- 

Part of the whole, 

Definitional in part, 

But able to be discarded/cast off 

In the aim of creating a new isotope

 Unaware of whom is part of the nucleus you have constructed, 

Only sense an absence from that reality: 

Heard this on a hike and it hits home: 

“'Cause I don't know if you are loving somebody, I only know it isn't mine” 

You move onward, with your new tribe offering nurture and support. 

Not sure how the barrier was established, was it that I crossed a signal, or a line? 

In any event, the cast is now reshuffled, 

And a relegation/delegation to a minor occasionally occurring role has taken place. 

I work to untangle these strands that entwine the present, dragging it with lethargic torpor 

Toward the horizon’s endpoint 

‘Cause I know it certainly ain’t mine to embrace any longer. 

You may have spoken the words first, 

But I fear I said them last. 

II 

Either casual guideposts to direct understanding 

Or obtuse unintended disclosures 

Demonstrate the changing dynamics 

Long suspected or realized 

Dwell upon the reality too long 

And be overtaken by a sense of loss, 

Left to wonder at unrequested declarations 

That only serve to confuse the issue. 

Sorrow inducing loss, due to unasked for barriers 

Walls unilaterally established 

The random sporadic hope-inspiring remark 

Only serving to heighten the sense of mistranslated signals 

False hope that has led to forsaken mindful exoduses into futile 

Ever-unrealized and unrealistic expectations 

Could there be a sense of dishonesty 

That rankles, 

Or simply a failure to address the truth? 

Queries are made, 

But unattended and disregarded regularly 

Then, offense taken, when gestures are not understood 

And explanation of implication requested 

In the shower, ruminating, 

Realizing I no longer possess a 

Sense of adoration any longer 

Pleased to exhibit patience, 

Humility, understanding, 

Compassion, integrity… 

But adoration, once key to my being, now absent entirely. 

III 

Relegated to tertiary status 

Certainly no longer primary 

Would not have known of your relapse 

Had I not attended that Saturday meeting 

Wonder who was the first told, and how many 

Fruitless inquiry 

Not secondary, either 

Not among those who merit 

Your rising and approaching with a greeting, 

Surely not a hug 

Thus, tertiary level. 

Was a time… 

Posts or messages were answered 

Now, they languish in the ether 

Decision made to cease the effort, 

Since there is little response or even recognition 

No point in pursuit of that which no longer exists 

Chasing phantoms is unproductive 

No longer one to whom queries are posed, 

Advice requested. 

Tertiary it is. 

Time to accept and step away. 

 IV 

Realizing that it was your decision to cease our connection 

And that led to the desiccation and disappearance of the Us that had colored my life 

Although I never gave up on you and I 

I realize that the one thing I cannot detach from 

Has lost connection with me 

There have been the occasional forays 

To relink 

But always with a qualification that makes it unworkable 

As a relation worth valuing 

Tertiary at best 

And that is in no fashion a best for me 

February 7, 2022

© Ivar G. Anderson

 

Freedom Paean

 

Freedom Paean

 

Sincere sentiments

Treated with distrust or doubt

Heartfelt expressions

Ignored or at best breezily address with minimal allusion

Not full contempt, merely indifference

The investment yields no return

And therefore, demands withdrawal

Cast off and set free upon the open waters

Time to drift onward and allow the paths to diverge

Come to terms with futile longing for a return of expressed attention

An idea submitted time and again, futile denial now terminates

And the journey of discovery proceeds apace.

You may have said it first,

But I am destined to say it last.

April 3, 2022

© Ivar G. Anderson

I Said It Last 

Those terms of endearment 

Once so freely spoken 

Ended one cold winter night 

As a unilateral determination 

That these ideas and words should no longer be spoken 

 Trouble was, the feelings did not cease 

Not immediately, not currently 

Perhaps you spoke them first 

Alas, I say them last 

September 12, 2021 

©Ivar G. Anderson

Pondering in my heart

September 12, 2021 Got some things to ponder over these days. So...gonna be posting some of the thoughts that I have committed to paper or digital form as I find them in the detritus of my USB drive. Be prepared for none of it to make much sense. But since this blog is rarely frequented (even by me), not exactly a burning issue, now, is it?

 Waking morning vision

Single lavender rose

tightly budded

long stemmed

laid atop a set of white wooden stairs

leading up to a paneled deck

before a closed glass entryway door

Sylvan Lake

September 21, 2020 

© Ivar G. Anderson

The Stoic Viewpoint

I can recommend this article. I was told about Stoicism recently after I spoke at a gathering, telling a crowd that my existential philosphy had been discarded along with my former drunken alchololic lifestyle. I am now searching out a copy of the Meditations that Poet Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote long ago. Here is a brief entry into that train of thought, for a start, though.
Darius Foroux: Marcus Aurelius-3 rules for life

The hypersane are among us, if only we are prepared to look (republished from Aeon)

‘Hypersanity’ is not a common or accepted term. But neither did I make it up. I first came across the concept while training in psychiatry, in The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise (1967) by R D Laing. In this book, the Scottish psychiatrist presented ‘madness’ as a voyage of discovery that could open out onto a free state of higher consciousness, or hypersanity. For Laing, the descent into madness could lead to a reckoning, to an awakening, to ‘break-through’ rather than ‘breakdown’.
A few months later, I read C G Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), which provided a vivid case in point. In 1913, on the eve of the Great War, Jung broke off his close friendship with Sigmund Freud, and spent the next few years in a troubled state of mind that led him to a ‘confrontation with the unconscious’.
As Europe tore itself apart, Jung gained first-hand experience of psychotic material in which he found ‘the matrix of a mythopoeic imagination which has vanished from our rational age’. Like Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Heracles, Orpheus and Aeneas before him, Jung travelled deep down into an underworld where he conversed with Salome, an attractive young woman, and with Philemon, an old man with a white beard, the wings of a kingfisher and the horns of a bull. Although Salome and Philemon were products of Jung’s unconscious, they had lives of their own and said things that he had not previously thought. In Philemon, Jung had at long last found the father-figure that both Freud and his own father had failed to be. More than that, Philemon was a guru, and prefigured what Jung himself was later to become: the wise old man of Zürich. As the war burnt out, Jung re-emerged into sanity, and considered that he had found in his madness ‘the primo materia for a lifetime’s work’.
The Laingian concept of hypersanity, though modern, has ancient roots. Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (412-323 BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Ancient Greek means something like ‘uninhibited thought’, ‘free speech’, or ‘full expression’. Diogenes used to stroll around Athens in broad daylight brandishing a lit lamp. Whenever curious people stopped to ask what he was doing, he would reply: ‘I am just looking for a human being’ – thereby insinuating that the people of Athens were not living up to, or even much aware of, their full human potential.
After being exiled from his native Sinope for having defaced its coinage, Diogenes emigrated to Athens, took up the life of a beggar, and made it his mission to deface – metaphorically this time – the coinage of custom and convention that was, he maintained, the false currency of morality. He disdained the need for conventional shelter or any other such ‘dainties’, and elected to live in a tub and survive on a diet of onions. Diogenes proved to the later satisfaction of the Stoics that happiness has nothing whatsoever to do with a person’s material circumstances, and held that human beings had much to learn from studying the simplicity and artlessness of dogs, which, unlike human beings, had not complicated every simple gift of the gods.
The term ‘cynic’ derives from the Greek kynikos, which is the adjective of kyon or ‘dog’. Once, upon being challenged for masturbating in the marketplace, Diogenes regretted that it were not as easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach. When asked, on another occasion, where he came from, he replied: ‘I am a citizen of the world’ (cosmopolites), a radical claim at the time, and the first recorded use of the term ‘cosmopolitan’. As he approached death, Diogenes asked for his mortal remains to be thrown outside the city walls for wild animals to feast upon. After his death in the city of Corinth, the Corinthians erected to his glory a pillar surmounted by a dog of Parian marble.
Jung and Diogenes came across as insane by the standards of their day. But both men had a depth and acuteness of vision that their contemporaries lacked, and that enabled them to see through their facades of ‘sanity’. Both psychosis and hypersanity place us outside society, making us seem ‘mad’ to the mainstream. Both states attract a heady mixture of fear and fascination. But whereas mental disorder is distressing and disabling, hypersanity is liberating and empowering.
After reading The Politics of Experience, the concept of hypersanity stuck in my mind, not least as something that I might aspire to for myself. But if there is such a thing as hypersanity, the implication is that mere sanity is not all it’s cracked up to be, a state of dormancy and dullness with less vital potential even than madness. This I think is most apparent in people’s frequently suboptimal – if not frankly inappropriate – responses, both verbal and behavioural, to the world around them. As Laing puts it:

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last 50 years.

Many ‘normal’ people suffer from not being hypersane: they have a restricted worldview, confused priorities, and are wracked by stress, anxiety and self-deception. As a result, they sometimes do dangerous things, and become fanatics or fascists or otherwise destructive (or not constructive) people. In contrast, hypersane people are calm, contained and constructive. It is not just that the ‘sane’ are irrational but that they lack scope and range, as though they’ve grown into the prisoners of their arbitrary lives, locked up in their own dark and narrow subjectivity. Unable to take leave of their selves, they hardly look around them, barely see beauty and possibility, rarely contemplate the bigger picture – and all, ultimately, for fear of losing their selves, of breaking down, of going mad, using one form of extreme subjectivity to defend against another, as life – mysterious, magical life – slips through their fingers.
We could all go mad, in a way we already are, minus the promise. But what if there were another route to hypersanity, one that, compared with madness, was less fearsome, less dangerous, and less damaging? What if, as well as a backdoor way, there were also a royal road strewn with sweet-scented petals? After all, Diogenes did not exactly go mad. Neither did other hypersane people such as Socrates and Confucius, although the Buddha did suffer, in the beginning, with what might today be classed as depression.
Besides Jung, are there any modern examples of hypersanity? Those who escaped from Plato’s cave of shadows were reluctant to crawl back down and involve themselves in the affairs of men, and most hypersane people, rather than courting the limelight, might prefer to hide out in their back gardens. But a few do rise to prominence for the difference that they felt compelled to make, people such as Nelson Mandela and Temple Grandin. And the hypersane are still among us: from the Dalai Lama to Jane Goodall, there are many candidates. While they might seem to be living in a world of their own, this is only because they have delved more deeply into the way things are than those ‘sane’ people around them.
Neel Burton
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.