The Insights of Friendship

Most people are afraid to talk with middle & high school students for the wrong reasons. If you fear your distinct lack of coolness, you are misplacing that fear. If you fear you will bore them, you might be closer to the mark of why you should be afraid. Indeed, there is a sense in which one ought to be frightened to talk with your average high schooler. Notice that we should fear talking with students, not just to students. Most students I know only bore of adults when they are talked to rather than talked with. So, you should be afraid if: (1) you slip into talking to them, or (2) you actually listen to what they say when you talk with them.

About a year ago, I sat across from a very bright high school student. I admired his mind, for his manner carried just as much insight as mental intimidation. He bears a unique gift for observing people & seeing their motivations. Some call that gift discernment or emotional intelligence. So, as we discussed how difficult it is to be authentic, especially in high school, I pressed further and asked how he defined authenticity. His response blew me away.

"Authenticity is knowing what you want & being honest with yourself about it."

Four years studying youth ministry, the Bible, & philosophy hadn't taught me such a simple, insightful understanding of authenticity. I know Camus & Sartre believed authenticity meant being yourself & choosing that no matter the circumstances. But my student saw the heart of the issue. For most people authenticity remains aloof to the extent that you doesn't know what you want. So the next time you ask a high school student what they want to study in college, or ask a college student what they want to do with their degree, or ask any group of people where they want to eat lunch, know that you risk igniting an existential crisis.

Speaking of existential crises, consider the degree to which you or I do not know what we want. Further, how honest are you & I about what we really, really want? Cue Ryan Gosling (forgive the language)...

While these questions of authenticity remain deeply important & complicated by the difficulty of truly knowing yourself, they are not the heart of my present task. I hope you see what I gained through talking with this high school student. Where I may have feared appearing lame or boring to a bright 16 year old, I ought to have feared the kind of introspection our conversation would elicit. As mentor & mentee, advice giver & advice receiver, a single lane road emerges. As friends, discussing authenticity face to face, I remain forever changed by what he saw. The insights of friendship cast out fear & furnish your world with truth, joy, & understanding.

Fear stands as a terrible reason to do anything, but it remains a reason most people do many things. Yet an additional truly destructive dynamic exists far too often between teenagers & adults, especially teens & their parents. Fear may erode any possibility for an adult to talk with a teenager, but many do not connect the dot that raising a young person also means cultivating a friendship. Having worked for a number of years with teenagers & parents, I rarely found a teenager or parent that simply did not care about the other. Desiring the best for your loved ones comes naturally. Thank God it does. But developing friendships between parents & children, adults & teenagers remains foreign in our world.

You see, we inherited a relatively new cultural landscape when we created teenagers. Teens did exist in ages past, but the dawn of the term 'teenager' as a distinct social group forever changed the way adults & parents interact with students. Peer-to-peer mentoring remains the primary formative experience for teenagers. Most teens encounter adults talking to them & not talking with them. Now, part of the idea of adults forming friendships with students rightly concerns us. Some parents fall back into appearing as a peer-friend to their child, like Regina's mom from Mean Girls. Furthermore, the prevalent reality of abuse always taints our perception of adult-teenager interaction. Both issues exist in our world.

However, here I must assert that parents & adults failing to cultivate real friendships with teenagers will remain the greatest failure of any generation. Friendships are the enduring bond of all human community, no matter what society or what age. Within two minutes of meeting the woman who one day became my wife, I knew I wanted to be her friend forever. Knowing what I know now, I believe even if we never developed our romantic relationship I would remain a fortunate man for being her friend.

I am not a parent yet. I can only empathize with the difficulty of wearing so many 'hats', those of provider, confidant, discipliner, advocate, protector, etc. To cultivate friendship with your child, from the outside, looks like a deeply difficult task. However, even if we as people must start with the fear of failing to befriend the next generation, we have to begin talking with our middle & high school students. So, in striving towards authenticity, I admit I rarely desire the work cultivating a friendship requires, especially with some a generation or two behind me. Yet, I also attest to the enduring insights my friendships provide, chief of which being the inherent worth of friendship itself. Talking with & loving a friend will stand forever as the most worth-while human relationship. May we invite the next generation into this worth-while task.