I’ve always been affianced with the sitcom FRIENDS, which ran for 10 consecutive seasons on NBC between 1994 and 2004 created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman.
To be honest I was more of a Starsky & Hutch devotee. I loved the shenanigans of Starsky and how Hutch, with his looks and level-headedness, got his buddy out of trouble. They were in perfect sync and made a great team and had each other's back, which is at the heart of today’s column.
Even so, considering the limited options of what to see at the time and also because FRIENDS was being broadcasted in my early twenties, when ‘friendship’ is very much the raison d'être, I did enjoy watching it, fantasizing on what fun it would be to live with a group of friends. This idea seemed to entice the imagination of young people and I know of groups of people here in Malta who actually hired an apartment and tried to emulate this setting.
Recently, thanks to Netflix, I went back in time and watched most of this Series. The anecdotes and stories of romance and friendship are captivating. This group of young people in the 20-30 age bracket had such joie de vivre, but they also knew they couldn’t get through life and the hostilities and challenges it threw at them if you didn’t have camaraderie.
Somehow, they were cognizant that if they did not hang on to each other, it spells trouble because life can be unfair and unbearable at times. They tried to emulate the same model of how these six fictious characters lived in Manhattan, New York City. To compound it all, I came across the ‘reunion episode’, 17 years after the last episode was broadcast, which I watched over the weekend.
Admittedly, I was captivated by how complex it is running a sitcom which had to have not one, but 6 equally important protagonists; Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer. God only knows how much effort went into taming those egos and keeping the cast of FRIENDS, friends.
But this Series also reignited in me the importance of genuine candid ‘friendship’ - and what a rarity it has become. Needless to say that I’m not talking about a handful of couples meeting on a Saturday night to play cards or organize the occasional barbeque. What I’m talking about here are deep-seated relationships that help you get through life’s challenges. I must admit, whilst I love being with people, and my role as Dean of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing is about connecting to people all the time and navigating around issues that we are faced with, it’s deeper than that.
The notion of ‘friendship’ has been around for as long as humanity has understood that it takes two to tango. It is an intimidating society we live in which injects in us competitiveness, ambition, jealousy, covetousness, resentfulness and a never-ending list of adjectives to describe the weeds that have grown around this beautiful discovery. I fear that the notion of friendship has been contaminated by Machiavellian canny, sneaky, and shrewd spirit. From what we see around us, ‘friendship’ has morphed into a convenient twinning of ways how we can mess around, people who help each other to soil the system and instead of getting their heads together to help others find ways how to control those around them. These people choose to take on Aristotle’s first and second definitions of friendship, ‘friendship for the sake of a benefit’ and ‘friendship for mutual pleasure’ rather than adopt his third definition of friendship that is ‘founded on shared values’, the one referred to as the ‘perfect friendship’.
At the start of the 20th Century, ‘friendship’, this sentiment and reaction, started becoming central to our communities at times taking the place of family and religion. Friendship, as we know, is vital as it provides firm support to endure challenging moments. ‘Empathy’ is at the heart of true and real bonds and helps us bear the most difficult of times.
But as I write, and you read, so many people are enduring lack of friendships making their lives excruciating.
My mind swirls as I think of people in prison and how these inmates are struggling with loneliness as they sit in their cells alone, with no one to talk to and trust and converse with.
My mind swirls as I think about the many people who endure mental health problems and are trapped in themselves. Trying to reach to others (possibly vice-versa as well) but cannot do so because of the black veil that encapsulates them. They are left to tackle the issues they are facing on their own when friends could be such an important contributing factor to their quality of life.
My mind swirls as I think about those people struggling with addictions, whether it is drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, food or other, knowing well enough that being judged and cornered by those around them will not take them out of the debacle and away from the vice that haunts them. Not only that probably ‘friends’ were around before, but when the going got tough they just vanished in thin air.
My mind swirls as I think of all those children who cannot understand the abuse that is taking place in front of their eyes or on them. My heart goes out to them. Their silence speaks loads and we need to read the signals they are giving us. Not having friends or else not wanting to speak to their friends about what they are experiencing is a massive pain they have to contend with.
My mind swirls as I think of the 10,000 people in Malta and Gozo who are in Institutions that, in the long run, dehumanize them and make individuals invisible as they slide into anonymity.
My mind swirls as I think of those who are struggling to ‘come out’ because of the fear they have of not being accepted by their parents and families.
My mind swirls as I think of those women who are struggling with domestic violence. They live in fear for themselves and their children and probably are all alone trying to create an image ‘out there’ to protect them from that pain.
My mind swirls as I think of those who cannot make ends meet and have had to resort to usury, making it impossible for them to think about anything but trying to find solutions to an otherwise terrible situation.
My mind swirls as I think of older persons who have been abandoned to their own devices either in the family homes or else in residential homes.
This is probably why this Series, FRIENDS, has managed to captivate such big audiences running into millions and becoming a global hit. We all recognize that genuine friendships are hard to get, yet life depends increasingly on them. As we drift into individuality, it is ever more difficult to encompass collegiality and the beauty of being side-by-side in all of this clamor.