Debuting in 1999, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire challenged contestants with fifteen increasingly difficult questions and corresponding payouts. Answer all fifteen questions correctly, as twelve contestants have, and you win $1,000,000. Regis Philbin, always the charming host, offered struggling players a lifeline. And while there were at least a dozen variations of the lifeline, one that continues to roll around in my head is phone a friend. Of course, the hope was that your ‘friend’ had the chops to provide the needed answer, otherwise, it was their 30 seconds of fame. I’ve often wondered, given the same option, who would I call? And while game show star is missing from my resume, the need to phone a friend remains a constant part of life.
The playground – aka – The Hunger Games
Between age 8 and 14, I moved to a couple different town. Leaving the safe bubble that was Yosemite for 6 years and living in parts unknown. Transplanting a child from one school to another is increasingly challenging. I now contend that kids generally need to be in their spot by junior high which is the absolute worse phase in human history. Truly akin to The Hunger Games, kids vie for inclusion in the cool kids club. Like Katniss Everdeen, it’s about survival, where having allies is your best strategy.
Me? I was cool kids adjacent. Never the popular girl, I was on the fringe, with my posse of girls who made junior high survivable. Debbie, Michelle, Jennifer, Lisa (because in the 1960’s, the name Lisa reigned supreme and I literally had another 1-2 or more in my class throughout school), we were the smart girls who also dressed up like the band KISS in 6th grade for Halloween. Photos exist, it was…a look. Hence, cool adjacent. But we had each other. Debbie and I were BFF’s and through those years when hormones and boy crushes overtook our lives, we had each other.
Where did my friends go?
Time. Time and children, moves, life. Factors within and outside my control resulted in a slow diminishing of my core friends. I say this not in a woe is me way, but in fact. Remaining were a handful of women I’d known since high school and met through the years. I was friendly with dozens of people. The group I rode with, people at work, the clerk at my grocery store…I had people who knew me, and others to occasionally hang out with (while navigating the teenage years with my own children).
Another move, a marriage where I was encouraged to be with my husband above anyone else and again, life. The result? Core friends tapering off except for rare phone calls, and in a new town, I didn’t have that sense of being known.
The need to phone a friend
Once the marriage ran its course (I’ll leave it there for now), a near desperate need to cultivate friends arose. Perhaps due to the approach of 50, but also, the craving for human connection, I found myself randomly talking to a woman in Peet’s and kept having coffee with her on Saturday mornings until my recent move.
At the core of it, each of us wants to belong. I watch the ducks in the lake outside my kitchen travel in flocks, providing aid, companionship (in a ducklike way) and safety for each other. The ducks, and a majority of creatures in the animal kingdom, have their flock, herd, swarm, convocation (eagles – you can look it up), their place of belonging and protection. Friendship can provide that sense of belonging for you and me. In her book, Braving the Wilderness, Brené Brown addresses the nature of belonging.
True Belonging. Be vulnerable. Get uncomfortable.
Be present with people without sacrificing who you are.
True belonging is ‘being seen,’ it’s showing up authentically. I contend that by our late 40’s, if not earlier, belonging is the true desire for women. Perhaps for men to, but I can only speak to the female experience. We desire to be seen and are tired of fitting into a carefully constructed persona. The few friends I’ve had for a million years, and those few I’ve gathered in the last 5ish years give space for authenticity. We question and wonder and doubt the systems we’ve been ingrained to believe and not only does space exist for our conversations, there is no judgement. The result, belonging.
Will you be my friend?
The most terrifying question one child can ask another. Tentatively approaching a solo child on the playground and making the simple request, “Will you be my friend?” At 53, still terrifying.
In the busyness of preparing to move, moving, and settling, I haven’t thought much about friends. Absent the few women I know and call friends in my new town, I have family, which fills a gap. But yesterday, it dawned on me I need to cultivate my people. My people with whom I have belonging. Those friends and family are my people, but as I chatted with a fellow swimmer during my Saturday laps, one who’d also relocated from California, also done triathlons, had similar references…I found myself pepped up. A feeling of being seen, shared experiences…sort of… It made me crave ‘my people.’
We need our people. Catapult yourself back to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When given the choice to phone a friend, who will you call? Over coffee on a Saturday morning, are you working through your true thoughts or comparing the weather and books you’ve read? For me, the ability to admit the foibles and struggles of life without judgement, that’s the belonging I crave. That’s the friend I want to phone. We all want that friend and can be that friend, and if you don’t have those people, your people, you sacrifice your sense of belonging. I, for one, want to see you. Find your people, my friends. Be Brave. Lisa