To My/Our Friend, Neil

When you find a friend,
From yourself you unbend.
You learn to show more
Than you have shown before.
In your friend you see
More of who you can be.

I have such a friend –
What he gave will not end.
We shared very much
While alone or in touch.
He stays on my mind –
There, him, I still can find.

Guide to Playing with Invisible, Silent, and/or Imaginary Friends

Guide to Playing with Invisible, Silent, and/or Imaginary Friends

Many of us have enough to do in keeping up to the demands of friendships amongst those we encounter each day. Those so socially engaged oft have little understanding for people who would further complicate their lives with interactions with folks who are not there. Nonetheless, there are still those who willingly (even preferably) seek the companionship of our more inconspicuous friends.

A lack of presence does not terminate our relations with the absent. The persons around us who have never engaged with the missing person might readily dismiss that apparent void as unnecessary to the reality of the moment. But our insubstantial friend peers out of our eyes and listens through our ears from his enthronement in our minds. As the fancy takes him, he may added commentary and interpretation that may have otherwise passed unnoticed by us. Perhaps there are some we encounter whose quick mental impressions we can smooth out of the wrinkles of our brains, but once we have allowed a friend to take up residence for any time, we will forever find his footprints scattered throughout our domes. Sometimes we allow our enemies to stomp around under there too.

What should we do with these unevictible absentee lodgers? Some may chose to wall them up behind bricks of neglect and forgetfulness, writing off those rooms as irrecoverable losses; we use so little of our brain capacity that the depletion seems slight. Some learn to double-bunk (and more) our guests into composite memories from which the component entities can rarely be separated again (especially useful for multiple exes, I hear in country music). But I would suggest that the best approach is to be a courteous host and allow your guests to have their fun. You too will benefit if you follow the proper guidelines.

First, you should probably learn to distinguish the characteristics of your relation with your cerebral comrade. Friendships start, pause, and even end in many manners, with more variety than can ever be catalogued. I will offer here three simple bins into which to sort your non-apparent guests, but readily admit you may find them too restrictive, non-exclusive, or totally unnecessary. There are:

• Invisible friends - It may not have been so long since you have seen your friend that you no longer know what he looks like. But the people around you nowadays do not share your memory of the invisible friend. This is not somebody they know and, if they accept your avowal for his existence, they do so as faith in you, not in your friend.
• Silent friends – There is little to no fresh exchange with the silent friend. For a deceased friend, there may be scant prospect for any new input. Nonetheless, the wellspring of memories of a silent friend may provide endless re-runs and even revised editions.
• Imaginary friends – A simple lack of reality does not engender an imaginary friend in our minds. Many real people whom we have never met have been subject of enough tales that our imagination has constructed from them a persona for us to know (and befriend). Oh, yes, there are certainly imaginary friends who are totally fictional creations, but it is our ability to animate them in our brains that permitted our friendships to blossom.

Some suggestions to do:

To the degree that you share yourself, share your otherwise hidden friends. They are part of you now.

Listen to your friends. Ask them for assistance and amusement. Remember the good times. Remember the lessons learned and the techniques and thinking employed to learn them. So often you did these things together and you can replay them again (with variation) if you allow it.

Be prepared to hear something new from your friends. They are reacting to your new experiences, even with their old eyes, ears, and words. They will enliven your thoughts and provide new viewpoints when you allow their characters the chance to speak within the brain you share.

Respect your friends, but do not idolize them. It is okay to disagree with them (and they with you) in your thoughts just as you might in person. They are your friends, remember?

Maybe you should not:

Talk aloud to your friends when other persons are present. If you feel it is necessary to do so, please at least introduce them to the people in the room.

Close yourself off to the possibility of their return. Do not become so enraptured with your memories of a friend that you will dismiss an opportunity to extend your memories with fresh contact. Even the long-gone friend (prominent amongst the Silents) may have new material discovered by you or others. Sequels and remakes do occur and sometimes live up to or improve upon the original; if nothing else, they remind you of the original.

Allow them to take over. Hey, this is your psyche and your life. They have their own body (or book, or mythical beast) to inhabit. Let them talk to you, but draw the line when they attempt to possess you entirely. Friendship has its limits, doesn't it?

The friendships that go into making us who we are should be treasured even as they grow old and distant. Give them some attention and they will remain shiny, able to reflect back to you that which you store within. Oh, sure, some will have the warps and distortions of a funhouse mirror, but that is part of the fun of life too.

Pooka Privacy

Pooka Privacy
I was talking with Harvey yesterday and he made a very good point. People are seldom what they seem, he said, but we seldom seem to need to know who they are. Not that we never might not be safer to identify the deeply hidden lunatic or sociopath lurking amongst us. But the occasions which would make much difference to us personally are so rare that the investment of nervous energy to it will generally be wasted if repeatedly applied to everyone we meet.

Perhaps that is why I pay so little attention to people beyond the demands of courtesy. Courtesy is an important shield for both the wielder and the recipients seeing themselves in its shining surface. Harvey says so too and he is one of the most courteous beings I know. Oh, sure, he likes his little jokes, but he only pranks to help people, not to hurt or humiliate them. A bit of humor does not contradict the unfathomable sincerity of courtesy. It merely serves to bring attention back to the surface of what is seen and said and to remind us only internally of the mysteries and absurdities of what lies unseen and unsaid beneath.

But can we live our lives knowing people by what they publicly show and tell or do we need to know their inner beings? Who has permission to peek behind our (Jungian) character masks to glimpse at the selves even we often do not know? Do we grant this permission or is it the natural right of others to feed their curiosity and suspicion in precaution for their safety and security? Certainly our curiosities and anxiety-driven motivations are natural enough, but is trust not an evolutionary compromise to allow our species to cooperate rather than to skittishly remain frozen, unable to turn our back to our fellow Man?

Privacy has never been a big concern for Harvey, but he respects discretion. If folks have a story to tell, well, he’s all ears, so to speak. But if they prefer friendless silence, he will readily seek the more welcoming company of others. Nobody ever met and parted friends with a more convivial stranger than Harvey. He quietly accepts what others offer with the importance they place upon it. Infrequently, he may reciprocate, but not compete, with his own tales, whether truthful, fancy, or some proper blend thereof. But it is his willingness to listen to any and all who so often found themselves misheard, marginalized, or ignored which quickly endears him to them.

Harvey says it is the simple courtesy of acknowledging that anyone may have a story awaiting an airing, whether to share our human experiences of joy, grief, or inexplicable fortune, good, bad or not yet known. The storyteller has a license to withhold or to embellish his tale beyond simple truth, to don whatever masks his players require to animate their actions, and to set the stage as a frame for our attention. We, in the world surrounding the individual, are best served by our patience to listen from our seats in the theater, not by any desires to storm the stage and shut down the presentation. Wait for the Q&A, he says. A teller in a good mood from a receptive audience may be even more revealing (and entertaining).

Does an invisible Pooka in the room put people off? It only seems to bother some people when they know he is there and many others do not sense any malevolence either knowing of his presence or not. After all, they say, he is not listening to anything we are not saying to others already and who is he going to be able to tell?

But the troubled ones see it differently. The Pooka is uninvited, they say. Our public stories are only semi-public occasions to be relayed to our privately selected audience. Not that we have anything to hide, of course, they say, but we learned in grade school that etiquette requires that nobody in the chain is allowed to read a passed note except the recipient (unless the teacher spots its passage). It simply is not playing by the rules, they say. Nobody likes a tattle-tale. Mind your own business.

Well, Harvey knows who he is and what he does, so it does not upset him when some folks feel him step on their toes. He may be big, but he treads as light as air. His mission is to lend an ear to the neglected. People do not need to fear him. The Bogeymen will cause enough mischief to the deserving without his help.