Friendship, the perpetual parting of ways.

ah bah Liu Yin
yo what's up I got a genuinely meaningful question from one of my patreon supporters and it's kind of been burning a hole in my pocket beeping to get around it and answer it so this question comes from Mohammed Socrates normally I only use the first names of people who write into me with questions on patreon by email otherwise in this case I feel confident that I can refer to him as Socrates without revealing too much of his personal information but I showed to Mohammed Saturdays he writes to me saying I would love to hear your personal experience with non-vegan friends and your philosophy on friendship in general I think you could give us a unique perspective and take on such a delicate and deep matter given your experience in age Wow so it's a flattering question and it is true more than a year ago I did make some videos talking about friendship mostly in relationship to politics political aspirations trying to make the world a better place and how friendship is an important part of that but he's obviously asking for something deeper and broader and also addressing friendship with non-vegans the nature of friendship between adults I think it's very different in Scotland as opposed to England I think it's very different in Portugal as opposed to Spain I know it's very different in France in contrast to Germany and within the South of France you could see right away how different it was for French people who were of Moroccan ancestry North African ancestry as opposed to French people of other ethnic origins so friendship sometimes across very small cultural divisions small cultural barriers can be profoundly different and I have an old friend or frenemy here in China who used to say yes he has a PhD in history and he used to say that different social classes generally relate to one another like different ethnic groups and the first time he said that to me actually I thought yeah I you know what I've never quite thought of it in those terms before maybe I never quite wanted to accept it in those terms before but yeah as much as we talk about generalizations of a behavior and culture in terms of nationality or ethnicity very often the differences between rich and poor the sometimes subtle dotted lines between the social classes you can move down from grades in rich and poor these things also influence nature friendship but for me coming from Canada as I do the mean disappointment in my life was discovering the extent to which friendship between adults only exists when people have a common motive linked to sex money or once in a while things fall into a third category along the lines of drugs and alcohol when you're clean and sober as I am I don't drink any alcohol I don't use any drugs you're taking yourself out of those lesser categories and then it seems like people are only motivated to make the time to talk to you if they're motivated by sex or if they're motivated by money and once you're familiar with that whenever you become familiar that in Canadian culture and I think in some cultures more than others as an adult then I think you start to value almost any friendship that's offered to you that stands on a basis outside of those things whether it's intellectual or political it's based on some kind of positive aspiration change the world or even if it is just based on curiosity so what is friendship I think the one original thought I have to contribute here is that contrary to so much of our cultural programming growing up I do not believe that friendship is about knowing other people is about understanding other people or that it is fundamentally and integrally about them understanding you about being understood about being known or about being appreciated I think if you approach friendship in terms of appreciation in that sense you're really on a downward spiral of looking for other people's approval and other people's validation and if you're looking for understanding I think again that really may not be a friend that you're looking for I think the crucial discipline you must have in order to make new friends and to maintain friendships over long periods of time sometimes over long large distances is actually to be detached about whether or not you know somebody at all to be able to set aside again and again everything you do know about somebody and to encounter them without those preconceptions without those expectations to let them show you who they really are so for me I think that friendship between adults relies much less on knowing and being known and much more on setting aside your preconceptions and being willing to say I don't think I know you I don't assume I understand you I'm going to meet you today I'm going to find out who you are and in many ways some subtle and profound some obvious you're not the same person you were five years ago and the people who can't do that again those of you have some gray hairs some of you'll be nodding your heads saying yeah I know just what you're talking about but it's really impossible to maintain a friendship with someone who still thinks of you as the man you were at age 25 or the teenager you were age 15 some people seek comfort in that some people want to have friends and relatives who will forever regard them as the person they were when they played high school football or when they had some particular achievement of their life in university and the younger years or what have you but doesn't matter whether it's 25 or 45 or any other moment in time I think that the type of knowledge we're talking about in friendship is not love is not certainty is not understanding but is instead a constant state of somewhat refined doubt and openness friendship I think is not about coming together and staying together I think it is to quote myself a perpetual parting of ways you part ways again and again you come together again again and you discover who someone is not from a blank sheet of paper not from a state of total ignorance but a guess from a state of compassionate inquiry put it that way because on a deeper level you care about this person enough to let them show you who they are you care about them enough that you want to find out who they are but you have to discipline yourself not to bring your preconceptions to that not to insist on your understanding of who they ought to be this is why it is so difficult for parents to really be friends with their own children even if they behave in a manner that's friendly most parents are constantly hung up on their notion of who their child could be who their child should be who their child ought to be and from my perspective that is so to speak the death of friendship ah ba Liu Yin