Camaraderie

This post is something of a delayed reaction to a conversation I had with Dean and, shortly thereafter, Herr Vogler. I will take the liberty of underlining what I consider to be the “key points,” both to increase likelihood of your understanding and to ensure that even the half-assed readers who skim will still get the gist of it.

Let me see if I can do this justice.

For years now, I’ve been trying to explain the unexplainable, to describe “what I’m all about.” My unique view on life, as it were. What I would like to impart to others.

It’s all so abstract, so enigmatic. I know I still won’t be able to explain it fully, and I know I will have to resort to hokey analogies or allegories, but I think I can sum it up in one word: camaraderie.

According to The Five Love Languages or whatever the book is called, mine is “quality time.” No surprise there.

But quality time does not mean sitting around discussing, analyzing, or philosophizing. And I can not overstate how frustrating it is for me that the extent of my social life seems to involve sitting in a living room and talking rather than doing.

Share experiences. Don’t just get together once in a while and chit-chat and think it’s a healthy friendship.

People in general are too… domesticated for my tastes. No offense to you married folks. Just promise me you won’t become a slave to society’s conventions or your mortgage. Whatever cookie-cutter lifestyle you think you want, that’s fine. You know, “the pursuit of happiness,” whatever your definition of that is.

Here’s my first semi-silly allegory: think of us as characters in a role-playing game. Indeed, perhaps my notion of camaraderie can best be described as a “party member” mentality. For crying out loud, gallivanting around with the K-man last summer, Final Fantasy VIII and The Return of the King were the most-played CDs in my car, and it all seemed so appropriate.

As I tried to explain to Herr Vogler a couple weeks ago, as we chucked rocks into a stream at night, fellowship is at its best when the group is united in a series of episodic adventures with a long-term objective to work towards. And each person has his or her own sub-plot satisfied. Many Lesser arcs plus one Greater arc. That’s why I compared it to a fantasy adventure: “Let’s go to this place, then this place, then get caught up in this side track, then finally make it to our destination and do what we set out to do.” Maybe you want to spontaneously stop by a rock quarry and look around for cool stuff, then stop at a local diner for lunch and chat with the locals, then make a couple more stops on your way to meet people for a canoe trip or an amusement park or whatever, then wind down with frozen Margaritas somewhere. I don’t know what you want to do. It’s an example. I’m not saying every day has to be a freaking vacation, just that it’s all in the mentality, and if that attitude is shared, so much the better.

Even the most motley group would work (perhaps even more so), so long as there is a common goal or attitude. The tie that binds. Common ground. Another comparison I made with Herr Vogler was that fellowship, to me, is like in King Arthur: They weren’t on the same page about a lot of things—especially faith—but they were die-hard loyal companions. Why do you suppose that is? I said that maybe it was no coincidence that most of my best friends aren’t even practicing Christians. They don’t need to be! There’s a sense of mutual, unconditional respect—certainly a prerequisite for my sense of camaraderie.

Perhaps my frustrations with Life Group highlight this conundrum. We didn’t do enough, and though I always felt like I was still on the fringe, people seemed content with my participation anyway and had affection for me regardless. Uh-uh. That’s not enough. Unless this is the Jedi Council, I need more than just a general connection to make us real companions. When I had coffee with Jim that last time, he encouraged me that there’s much more for me than Kansas City has to offer. Take that, compared with my farewell to Sensei Banks, and I felt as though I had been given permission to leave. Strange, but liberating. Now, I have my eye on a Bible study group I found online in St. Louis, but a big part of me says not to worry about it because that particular fellowship will never be quite what I’m looking for.

A friend of a friend, Madison Garcia, a girl I know only on Facebook, surprised me when she observed that I “have a zest for life.” Granted, she has probably heard countless stories from our mutual friend Jordan Sommers, but the fact remains that someone who has never even met me seems to have the beginnings of an understanding of me, meanwhile I can’t seem to get the people I do hang out with to understand!

Paradoxically, I am also easily annoyed by most, especially when they impose; I’m largely an introverted free spirit. It’s truly ironic that I’m so antisocial yet I’m trying to drive home the point of companionship. When people don’t have an agenda they’re trying to enforce, things go much more smoothly.

Dean, like me, doesn’t like to throw around the word “friend.” He is also annoyed when people call themselves “friend” when they never really do anything about it. We’re men of action.

To cast my Patronus charm, I would have to say my concentration would be on the time a bunch of us went to Cedar Point, the roller coaster capitol of the States, poised on the peninsula in Sandusky, Ohio. Good people. Good friends. Good companions. And a large part of the joy of the experience was obviously the levity of having completed my thesis and my master’s degree. A good-size group of people I went through the shit with went together to a fun and new place while relief and accomplishment was fresh in our minds. Best day ever. Best example yet.

Again, such vitality shouldn’t have to be limited to vacation time. I just wish I could find a way to tap into that on a daily basis. I wish you could, too. Work hard, play hard. Don’t just kill time until you have to go back to work!

I do not wish to imply that companions are accessories to a good time: they are the good time. I also do not wish to imply that you have to be care-free to have camaraderie, because you can have it just as easily in a troublesome situation.

There’s something sublime about listening to The Kraken (from the score Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) in my car. I don’t know, it does something to me. The thoughts and imagery I get… dang it, I just want to do more. Long distance friendships are getting old. This piece of music evokes that sense of high adventure with people who share the idea. It transcends the source of the music itself. I mean, yeah, it’s an adventure film, but this music is much more than that. Ah, this is still too vague for me to explain. Too abstract. The Kraken is another blog post entirely. Another time, perhaps.

I know what you’re thinking. “Adventure… excitement… a Jedi craves not these things.” I agree. It’s not about just escaping the boredom of a monotonous, sheltered life just for the sake of adventure. In fact, I’d rather sit around and play Dr. Mario with Scott Blanchard any day than go on any “out-of-the-ordinary” sojourn with people who don’t share this value. In that case, sitting around is just fine by me.

I realize that you could take most of these paragraphs, shuffle them around in any order, and still be just as confused. My thoughts are scattered at best. If only I could explain this completely… but I guess it can’t be explained; it must be understood over the course of a year’s worth of such “quality time.”

So do I still fail to impart the essence of it all? Camaraderie, companionship, mutual respect, shared experience, exploration, adventure, doing new things, seeing new places, objects in motion, spontaneity, common goals, and victory celebrations. Savor the flavor of the moment.

I still can’t put my finger on it. It’s frustrating, but I owed it to you to at least try.

And so, my fellow swashbucklers and explorers, I leave you with one thought: If a tree falls in the wilderness and no one is around, who among you will go with me to track it down just for the heck of it?

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can…