Gold ships and silver ships

A line from a novel I read over 20 years ago remains stuck in my mind:

"There are gold ships and silver ships, but the best ship is friendship."

Corny, isn't it? And I don't even know if it's a well-known saying, or just something the author Joseph Heller made up. But I've been thinking about friendships and what they mean to me. Apparently, not a whole lot, because I don't really have a large circle of friends...and, as the recent high school graduation anniversary reminded me, I certainly don't have very many longtime friends, not from my school days, at any rate. Part of that is to be expected, I suppose, and not really specific to me. People tend to drift apart once they enter new spheres of life. When you enter university, when you start out in a job, and then again a new job, when you marry, when you have children, every new sphere brings new relationships, most often at the expense of older ones.
A lot depends on your personal definition (or, as I like to say as a card-carrying constructivist, your personal construction) of friendship. I suppose your relationships with other people could be plotted on a continuum that could have the poles of "enemy" vs. "friend", or of "completely indifferent person" vs. "really close and intimate friend", with loose acquaintances somewhere in between.
Another dimension is likely to be your personality. Are you an extravert who is outgoing and sociable, if perhaps a little superficial, someone who likes to have many friends around? Or rather an introvert who prefers few but deep friendships but who is just as happy not to have his friends around all the time?

When I look at my own preferences, I find that I want to be friends with many, but I also want to be left alone; I relish the lively exchange of ideas with other people, but I admit to preferring the company of a good book to a crowd of friends.

In all honesty, I also find that most friendships can turn boring all too soon. Conversations with longtime friends tend to be predictable; if you haven't seen them in a while and then meet them again, you mentally "check off" the relevant topics of discussion (family, job etc. ) but rarely cover new ground. But I realize that, much as marriage, friendship needs work, needs input. You can't expect your friends to be there for you if you never are there for them, even if just for listening. It has to be a two-way street.

So, to return to the trite phrase from the beginning, it may be that true and deep friendship is better than any gold or silver ship could be. But you have to work to keep that ship afloat; if you're not prepared to do that, you may as well leave the ship in the harbor. ((I think I now have flogged the ship metaphor to death) )

Apropos of the rainy weather

Biking through the pouring rain yesterday, it helped that a bouncy little song was playing and re-playing in my head... no, it wasn't the all-too-obvious "Singin' In The Rain", though that is of course a beautiful standard. (And I do have a Judy Garland, up-tempo version of it somewhere, which I really need to listen to again sometime)

It was a song from the Disney live-action classic, "In Search of the Castaways", from 1962, which also happens to be the year of my birth. The Jules Verne-based film had an eclectic cast including George Sanders, the bubbly Hayley Mills and... Maurice Chevalier.

Chevalier and Mills together sang the song I'm referring to, a buoyant little number by Walt Disney's all-purpose songwriters, the Sherman brothers.

I'm quoting from memory here:


Why cry about bad weather? Enjoy it!
Each moment is a treasure, enjoy it!
We're travelers on life's highway, enjoy the trip!
Each lovely twist and byway, each bump and dip!

When there's a complication, enjoy it -
you've got imagination, employ it!
A hurrican comes your way? Enjoy the breeze!
You're stranded in the jungle? Enjoy the trees!

(there's more, about seeing roses in the snow, and "joie de vivre" making them grow,
but I always sing that first part ;)

And you know what? It worked - I really enjoyed getting wet all the way to my unmentionables :)

Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can also hurt

I apologize for making this a more personal post than usual... on second thoughts, what am I apologizing for? Aren't Blogs supposed to be personal?

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended a high school reunion last weekend, my first ever. It was interesting to see how my former classmates had changed and matured, in appearance as well as in outlook. But while I had been prepared for the usual questions about what my life had been like in the intervening years, what career choices I've made and so on, I was not prepared when a former classmate confronted me with a description of my older self that was anything but positive.

My own memories of school are hazy and selective, and while I remembered having had political differences and debates with that classmate, my take on them was that it had all been in good fun of the "agree to disagree" variety. However, her recollection was much different, and much as I want to believe my version, I fear hers may be the more accurate one, especially as she felt so strongly about it that this impression of me virtually stayed with her through the years. I should add that this classmate is of Indian heritage, and as she told me, my statements in class and to her had clearly been racist. And while she had encountered "faceless" racism and intolerance before and elsewhere, to her I became the face of racism.

I can't really say strongly enough how much that distressed me. There are few things I despise more or find more repugnant than racism, intolerance, or discrimination of any sort. My own self image all these years has been of a person remarkably free of prejudice, someone who truly believes that all people are basically brothers and sisters, all children of a loving God. The idea of demeaning or belittling someone on account of their color, race, ethnicity or religion is completely alien to me...now. And I am deeply ashamed that I ever may have acted or believed differently.

But the more salient point here is that our own perception of ourselves, and of how we act in certain situations, may be much different from how others perceive us. A careless remark, possibly meant in fun, can hurt deeply... never more so than during the formative years of young personhood, where one is still searching for one's own identity. And young people can be especially cruel and harsh in their views of others.

I hope and I think that my classmate realized that I've changed from the person who made all these statements in the past, whether they ever were intentionally racist or not. And I believe the lesson here is very easy...and very hard at the same time: the things we do, the things we say, leave traces in the people around us. And while it is unrealistic to expect that we will always be able to consider every possible consequence of our acts, it sometimes may be good policy to remember the old saying that "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all", or, because disagreement is a healthy and necessary thing, to at least be civil about it.

Home is where the heart is

Last weekend, I attended my *cough, cough* 25th high-school graduation anniversary back in my hometown of Duesseldorf... to protect the innocent and prematurely aged, I won't be posting pics from the reunion, but I'll post a few of the 100s of pics I took while visiting the city for the first time in 5 years. Besides a few shots of the city, here's your chance to not only see a duck from below, and a crane that looks like a horse's head (at least to me it does!), but also a rare one of my wife and me :)

Here goes:

Budapest impressions