Testing a Friendship

The workplace is where you meet people.  Unless you own the enterprise or have been given hiring authority, generally the people you encounter are not of your own choosing.  We used to have a small amount of experience with this in our first year of college when somebody in the housing office assigned us a dorm room and roommate.  This may have been done randomly in some places, or perhaps with intent to force interaction between people of different backgrounds.  A scion might need to share space with a student of need, an athlete with a bookworm.  And dorms have other rooms with other pairs of people that you have no choice but to accommodate when using the lavatories or attending dorm events or even sharing the elevators.  We used to have a military draft which mingled people of different backgrounds very effectively during World War II, much less so in the Vietnam era, and not at all now.  The dorm experience of my era has now given way to people choosing to live with their camp or HS friends, or opting for a homogeneous ethnic dorm with a hotline for every microaggression slight.  That delays our need to adapt to people we would likely not have selected on our own to the common missions of where we work.

My workplaces over a forty year career have been a few.  People leave.  New people get hired.  Residents complete their training and move on to be replaced by new graduates that The Match assigns.  We accumulate a lot of acquaintances with a subset of a few who become friends. 

“Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.”

― Benjamin Franklin        

That way work gets done, everyone benefits.  Some of the familiar persists when the sharing of work ends.  Business objectives move along to really holding a few people in special esteem.  Keep in mind that nothing is really permanent.  Couples divorce.  Kids run away or get disinherited.  Friends cheat each other.  But for the people you seek out in the workplace to bounce ideas off each other because of the respect they have earned, when the business deal is no more, the caring about them and the regard built in the best of times remains.  

A bit of a strain arose, not a personal spat, not even an interactive one, but a rift in what we believe and how we are scripted.  As we got into the closing days of Sukkot Israel came under attack.  I am a Zionist, for sure, but I also believe in standards of conduct.  And what Israeli voters have done to themselves does not exactly conform with what I aspire for the place that would be my default homeland if ever I were displaced.  I'm just not a hardball player.  The State has had its share of turmoil, more external than internal.   But it is the safety net for people like me, and certainly my not too distant ancestors, who got caught in systemic murders for being Jewish.  And there is also the need for sovereignty.  Of our Festivals, Sukkot has a universal message, applicable at least symbolically to the traditional 70 Nations of the World.  And ours is one of the seventy.  We need sovereignty, and for the last 75 years amid many challenges we have maintained it.

On a Festival that keeps the observant of us off electronic media, our State of Israel was attacked, and in a way that had no rules of restraint.  People celebrating, people no threat to anyone, were rounded up.  The infirm, the minors, women tending to their families, celebrants.  Whoever might be there for the taking.  Armed Gazans just gathered them or killed them outright.  They house their weapons in hospitals and mosques then complain that other military no longer respects the sanctity of healing and worship.  I once visited West Point with the Scouts.  We saw a parade.  As cadets were displaying what they had learned, the announcer summarized their curriculum as the Honorable Profession of Warfare.  There was nothing honorable at taking hostages or tossing grenades into civilian bomb shelters.  War is by definition destructive, but since international agreements after World War II, nations realized they could stop short of ruthless.  We saw ruthless, a complete denial of betzelem elokim, the image of God that would describe humanity in the Torah passage scheduled for the following morning.

Much to my surprise, my physician friend, a very capable professional who would not hurt anyone, starts posting distorted photos of Israeli soldiers maiming children.  I've met IDF soldiers.  They understand betzelem elokim.  But for the safety of the public, the military sites co-mingled with the population have to be deactivated, whether or not children are placed there knowing that the IDF will not shoot them dead or gather them into a cage indiscriminately.

It's the difference between success by character and success by technique.  The two sides are not equal, as the President of the United States affirmed in his international message a few days later.

But am I willing to Unfriend anyone, particularly a person who has much to admire professionally and personally.  So far I am not.  She knows what a hostage is.  But like many of us, she also knows who is in her tribe and what expressions of loyalty keep her in good standing.  The President described this attack as evil.  Taking an honorable person half a world away and create incentives to do things that are beneath my expectations of a friend reinforces the evil.

                                                                         

They Reappeared

Our social media blends a great resource for connecting to people with a toxic environment that has generated much public comment.  I've divorced myself from Sermo in toto.  My exploration of Twitter, which gives me access to some of the finest minds and most accomplished people, though typically as one of a quarter million followers, also immerses me with some people I'd try to avoid in person.  These do not let me choose my interactive partners.  For the same reason, I no longer read any responses to any of my public comments via Disqus, except from KevinMD where there is more of a professional bond between the participants.  

By far the largest platform, and the one dearest to me, has been Facebook.  My identified friends number less than 100.  I value it mostly to maintain contact with childhood acquaintances, some real friends, some who I've gotten to know better electronically.  To this day, I have never unfriended anyone I met through Ramapo Central School District #2.  Indeed, I have only ever unfriended one person who I knew personally, though a few who indirectly sought me out and pitched their political hardballs with too many curves.  I have declared people unwelcome, sometime in the form of a 30 day snooze but in a few circumstances, usually for being intrusive or of excessive sloganeering in lieu of the cognitive skills that our teachers aspired us to have, through the Unfollow option.  Not many, but not zero either.

I expect Facebook to respect my choice and not ask me to share my reason.  In fact, I really need no reason, though the reason is invariably annoyance to me and a more ethical one of not wanting to be induced to think of anyone I know in a deprecating way.  Alas, this week, two of the members of Unfollow Harem reappeared with the same types of initiated posts that prompted my initial opt-out of them decision.  The original action took a series of repetitively unwelcome communications, at least a dozen over short time interval.  And sometimes after failure of a snooze option to make me less sensitive to what I receive.  But once a well-considered unilateral Unfollow, which I have the capacity to reverse at any time, gets selected, my intent is permanent.

As the three notices from two individuals, with basically the same screeches that prompted my original action reappeared, my reaction was again to confirm another Unfollow.  I was not given that option.  As a solitary member among a billion or so global Facebook subscribers, I really don't have a way of fighting Facebook's City Hall or its algorithms.  I do have Unfriend, which seems an assault on my own level of tolerance, but I am adamant about remaining the master of my participation in modern social connectedness.

Put Together

Nobody has yet nominated me for a Stacy and Clinton makeover.  I'm skeptical about impressions but became a little less skeptical recently when I reacquainted panim el panim with a very gracious girl, now an elegant lady with an appearance well under her actual age, who I had not seen except in a Facebook picture in 50 years.  We had identical class schedules as high school sophomores, separated only by French for which she attained real proficiency and Spanish with my skill limited to letting Hispanic patients know I cared enough about them to converse briefly and read cast-off copies of El Diario from the floor of the NYC Transit trains.  I found her at the time cute, pleasant and intelligent, maybe the first time I ever really singled out one girl from among the masses.  I do not know how she found me but she seemed to go the hippie or beatnik track over the ensuing two years while I kept focused on my grades and college aspirations.  She and one other remained as prototypes which in due time approximated my wife, also cute, gracious, and intelligent with similar stature and identically colored hair.  I was anything but drawn to style, though as an early career entrant I understood from John Molloy's Dress for Success that appearance could serve as a useful tool.  Once my Brooks Brothers Credit Card was no longer needed, when my professional skill spoke for itself, it was a return to Goodwill and Boscov's for wardrobe staples.  And I never gained the graces of small talk, memorable handshakes, or the stylish haircut.

My friend and I went our separate ways, literally coasts apart and ideologically probably still within a light-year of each other.  However, we shared a valued acquaintance.  Her elderly aunt of abundant accomplishments attended my shul where I was mostly recognized as the Yom Kippur Torah reader.  Facebook when it came out reconnected a lot of high school chums, most of whom I have become closer to now than when I attended.  Friends of this type gather largely out of curiosity.  A few annoying political posts or comments or becoming a noodge with too many C'est Moi's in the manner of Miss Piggy invites the recipient to snooze for a 30 day respite, unfollow, Unfriend, or in the most egregious situations to block.  I got Unfriended by this former classmate the day after saying there were valid reasons to vote for Reagan, something the majority of citizens agreed upon at the time but announced the unpardonable sin to others

The irreversible aging process caught up with my friend's aunt, actually everybody's surrogate aunt, expiring at age 95.  There are funerals and there are celebrations of life.  Sorrow yes, tragedy no.  About 100 people assembled at the Jewish funeral home, some traveling considerable distance to attend.  A few lines above mine in the Guest Book was my friend's hand-printed sign-in, handwriting far better than mine.  She had come with her husband and son from the West Coast.  Though I had not seen her in 50 years, there was that FB profile photo posted several years earlier and not yet overwhelming attendance in the pews, so I had little difficulty identifying the old hometown girl.

Introductions to each other's families then ensued, briefly as the ritual of funeral was to commence shortly.  While she may have gone the hippie route as a high school senior, there were no love beads, headbands, flip flops, or overdue grooming characteristic of Vietnam War protesters.  Instead I encountered a most elegant person.  Her hair had been preserved in its color of youth, or at least it was not the grey color of mine, her husband's or her late aunt's.  The style duplicated that of the FB photo, probably beyond the skill of most people to maintain on their own.  Her clothing fit properly, an inviting mixture of burgundy and black.  I did not catch the shoes nor give the earrings enough attention to remember anything about their design.  She had averted the gait alterations and osteoporotic features of her aunt, not quite thirty years her senior.  Some conversation followed, still as gracious as I remember half a century back, repeated the following night at Shiva.

Our high school popular people arranged a 50 year post-graduation gathering for later this spring.  The confirmed attendance list is posted periodically by the organizing committee.  No black alumni coming, even though well represented in the class of 1969.  AP classes, where my friend and I still intersected our last two years, woefully under-represented.  Ugly ducklings transitioned to swans not coming either.  Juvenile delinquents one step from Reform School but living as mainstream adults, at least as I remember them, not on the attendance list either.  Don't know who on the attendance list needed to secure consent from their Parole Officers.  The popular people who got invited to the parties as teenagers arrange for themselves one more.


In the Chapel, my friend and I concurred that Florida seemed an undue schlep to greet the people that you see on Facebook posts most days.  The committee deserves lashes for not going beyond Facebook or word of mouth to capture the people who you haven't seen, maybe forgot about or never missed them, the people who really had been lost to follow-up but are worth a revisit, as my friend was to me.  No doubt those who spend the $149 reception fee will dress to the nines, get hair done, mani-pedis, maybe have their lens implants just in the nick of time to avoid eyeglasses.  My friend and I will not likely exchange handshakes or hugs, as our common personal link now belongs to the Ages. I did get Refriended, though.  I will remember her as stunning and poised which has its advantages over my natural frumpy and gauche.

Unfriended

While my usual comments analyze the vagaries of Jewish life or the world of a doctor paddling the medical streams, there are times for some political comments, which by their very nature are not always well received.  In the Facebook discourse, an old acquaintance with a very consistent left-leaning bent took offense to my backhand assessment of President Carter as an inducement to vote Republican, which I did for one of the very few times in 1980.  This individual no longer appeared on my news screen or chat presence over the next few days and disappeared from my friends list at about the same time.  A modern day expression of what I think much of organized Judaism has been doing for some time.  There are opinions that fit in and those that do not.  Hillel International hastily Unfriended some very bright, inquisitive students at Swarthmore College for a political position on Israeli foreign relations, even though neither Hillel or Swarthmore has any standing in creating Israeli foreign policy.  In my own era, not having a decent enough time at Ramah one summer to justify a return there next summer got me Unfriended by the our Rabbi where the view was there must be something amiss about me for what the Freudians would call a negative transeference reaction.  Ironically the Conservative organizations, for all the efforts that their dedicated honchos put into development, paid very dearly for this view of people as the insidious attrition figures over a generation would suggest.

Attempts to disconnect people, other than those who really mean you harm, has a way of backfiring.  Many a small USY clique reassembled at Hillel a few years later, with those external to the clique never really becoming part of Hillel in college and often not part of Judaism beyond college.  In a more contemporary expression, we have Facebook Friends, for me high school friends, most not particularly close at the time,  assembling decades later in a way that pays back a fundamentally good experience when no payback was ever anticipated or solicited.  Some have passions about their guns, which I find abhorrent.  Some would expand Romney's 47% to 100% Pirke Avot style with Mine is Yours and Yours is Mine--Am HaAretz [5:13].  Most have developed a passion for something.  It might be their work, or you might not be able to figure out what their work is.  It might be their memories of good times.  It might be their dogs.  Their enjoyment should be part of my enjoyment.  A real bond, formed on valid common ground, should be able to withstand the temptation of a click of the mouse on the Unfriend option.