Take care of friends

Joseph Epstein writes in his book Friendship: An Expose´ that the prominence and importance of friendship in the American lives have been on a steady decline over the last 40 years. His book coincides with a study done by sociologists at Duke and the University of Arizona, which reports that Americans have fewer friends today than they did 20 years agowith 25 per cent admitting they have no confidantes at all.

So forget the old days of picking and choosing friends. Do not worry if a friend in need is a friend indeed. You will be lucky to have a friend indeed! Never mind those watchwords against fair-weather friends. Even money can not buy friends anymore. Otherwise, why should an affluent society like the US come to this? Quit treating friendship like a restricted diet. Take by the handful to keep enough if most slip away.

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The latest research shows that the Americans are becoming lonely irrespective of sex, race, education or age. Intimacy within families has gone down too. But nearly one in tena much higher share than in 1985 -- reports that their husband or wife is the only person they confide in. In many cases the Americans are turning to their estranged, even divorced, spouses for friendship since they already know each other's best kept secrets.

It was as if to prove that point, the harrowing tale of a lonesome American surfaced in The Washington Post. An eighty-year old salesman stopped coming to work one day. Nobody bothered to find out why he was suddenly missing until his skeleton was found five years later in the bathtub of his house. Now police have a hard time identifying the dead. They can not find a friend or blood relation who can help with the investigation.

The story only reconfirmed what the study revealed. Weakening bonds of friendship, which other studies affirm, have far-reaching effects. Among them: fewer people to turn to for help in crises such as Hurricane Katrina, fewer watchdogs to deter neighbourhood crime, fewer visitors for hospital patients and fewer participants in community groups. The decline, which was greatest in estimates of the number of friends outside the family, also puts added pressure on spouses, families and counselors.

Meanwhile something interesting has been happening in the American society. The Americans are spending more time in their bathrooms, cooped up in the luxury of more space, iridescent glass tiles, multiple shower heads, heated mirrors, body sprays, instant steam, soaring skylights and portable speakers connected to wireless iPod transmitters. More money is not bringing them friends. They are receding into the more private quarters of their private homes.

Amazing statistics if you wish to know. According to Kitchen and Bath magazine, Americans will spend 22 billion dollars on bathrooms in 2006, which is 10 times the amount the US government will spend on Aids research this year. It is six times the annual budget of Kenya. If keeping friends is expensive, losing them is not cheap either!

It is an irony that flush with money, the Americans are faced with loneliness. Perhaps more consumption eventually consumes the consumer and leaves him to countenance his own hollowness. If parents are concerned that too many friends could spoil their children, here is something for them to think. Better spoiled than alone, because loneliness is painful like slow death.

Emerson defined that a friend is a person with whom one may be sincere, before whom one may think aloud. Alexander Pope even said it better in his letter to Jonathan Swift. He wrote that we lose our best part in every friend. But I like most what Henry Brooks Adams said: "One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim."

According to Tennyson, one makes no friend if one never made a foe. Friendship is the flipside of enmity, a fine balance which, if slightly disturbed, can turn the coin. Remember how many friends you have lost already, how many people who were cheek by jowl, hand in glove, have already vanished. When was the last time you saw your best friend? Do you have best friend for that matter, a buddy, a pal, a soul mate who gives you the confidence that you are not alone?

Barry Wellman and Jeffrey Boase of the University of Toronto found in their survey that Americans say they feel close to an average of fifteen others besides their friends. Friendship is a people-intensive industry, more closeness with more people increasing the chance of producing more friends. Friendship abides by the law of large numbers, greater the number of experiments, greater the chance of success.

If you have not talked to your friend, give him a call or pay him a visit to seek out that parallelism which goes back in time. Childhood friends, boyhood friends, friends who went to school with you, friends who rolled with you in the mud of the same playground, friends who played marbles with you, flew kites, rode bikes, went to movies, friends who grew up with you in the layers of time, a piece of your life is lost in each of them. Each of them is like a piece of shattered mirror, where you will find your own reflection.

It is a terrible thing not to have friends, which means you have never opened your heart to anyone. You do not have a confidante, someone you can trust with your innermost secrets. You never ventured out of your shell, which means you have remained a prisoner of your own lonely self.

Talk to your friends and take care of them unless you are planning an expansion of your toilet!

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.