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Polar opposite friendships--possible?
How many friends do you have who maintain polar opposite views/values from you?--And I don't mean "Facebook friends," but intimate friendships where you each trust and depend on each other, and could call them at 3am if necessary, and vice versa.
I have several former-best-friends with whom I talk now and then, but we are no longer very close. I wouldn't classify them in this category (and several of them have polar opposite views from my own). I am just wondering if it was the "drift" that killed the friendship, or if we drifted because as we grew up, our values just became too different to sustain an intimate friendship.
Truly, I am not sure how close I could get to a hard-core republican. I was chatting online with one of these older friends of mine today, and she mentioned that "All your Facebook statuses seem to be about politics lately..." and I replied, "Yeah, I'm really concerned about the outcome of this year's election, I'm on fire this year"... and then she changed the subject to her brother starting college, just like that. I know she votes republican because she's fervently pro-life, and voted for Bush both times ONLY because of that issue. So from the way she responded to that statement of mine, I'm pretty sure she's voting McCain and just doesn't want to go there with me.
But jeez, I mean... isn't that what friends do? With my best friends, I know where they stand on significant issues. We go down deep when we're talking, not surface crap or "catching up" for long... I always want to know where they stand on issues, life decisions, etc... and they know where I stand, and luckily, we tend to agree. I don't think we'd be close friends, otherwise. Same thing with ktsp and me... I don't think I could have married someone who was conservative, because I would have started a fight with that person every day (especially during this season!).
It just saddens me somewhat that my friendships tend to be with the same kind of people, because for whatever reason, I get pretty impatient with being in close quarters with someone who does not share my worldview. It's not that I think they should agree with me--but I do want to know why they believe a certain way, and I will drill into a person when I get to know them, to get down to the bedrock for what they believe. A lot of people are probably not cool with that.
But I have to know what someone believes, before I can figure out how to truly connect with them. It's just much harder to find ways to connect at a deep level when the person is standing on the opposite side of the world from me, so to speak.
Thoughts?
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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran
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