Sadness

I had the occasion to call an old friend a few days ago. He had some legal expertise in a different jurisdiction, and I figured I’d pick his brain. This was one of the first people I met in law school. He and his wife sort of adopted me when I started school, 8 hours from home and not knowing a soul. That sort of person tends to mean a lot to me.

This is a friend who now has 2 kids, a house, a mortgage, and all the trappings of respectability. He probably lives a very stable sort of life. This is in complete contrast to my own model of entropy which I call life. For whatever reason, things have changed in this friendship.

When a person gets a lawyer on the phone, the conversation is very short. The lawyer seems to want to get off that call as quickly as possible, and get on to something else. Even if it’s the President himself on the other line, a lawyer will always cut the conversation short. There’s no time for pleasantries.

I think civil litigators tend to be so busy they cannot spare the time to engage in idle conversation. The more they talk, the less time they have to bill. If they work for a firm, they have billing quotas to fill, and they are under much pressure to get there each month. They are literally too busy to stop and smell the roses. Having lived this lifestyle, it is no wonder that lawyers drop dead of heart attacks and strokes at a significantly higher percentage than the rest of the population.

The conversation with my old friend was pretty much like that. The whole conversation was awkward, and rushed. It was like my friend no longer had time for me, and very much like he was not all that interested in talking to me at all. There was a definite chill in the whole discourse. It was not like talking to a friend at all. It was pretty much a business exchange, which is normally something I dread.

That’s not a comfortable position to be in for me. I have never made friends all that easily. The friends I have made I believe to be lifelong, lasting relationships. When these relationships go sour, it is always hard for me to take. I have three very close friends. One of which I have had since about the age of three. The other two have been friends for at least 10 years or more. Only one of them is a lawyer. It is safe to say that friendships are one of the things that I treasure most in my life.

What causes a friendship to go sour? Good question. I still feel the same about my friend. I try to contact him every once in awhile, just to see how things are going. We live about 5 hours apart, so it’s not like I can pop in to visit on occasion. Perhaps the distance, no contact, and general progression of life is to blame. Either way, I know the friendship is not as solid as it once was.

I guess I really knew the score when I asked this guy to be in my wedding. He refused, stating that he was busy that weekend. That hurt, but obviously it was a harbinger of things to come. It should have been no surprise that I got a chilly reception on the telephone.

In that light, perhaps he was not as good a friend as I originally thought. Or perhaps I am making more of this than there actually is. I don’t know of many people who have lasting friendships such as I have. Then again, I don’t know of many people who are up at 3:00am past the age of 20, with nothing but two marsupials for company. Like many other things in my life, perhaps my close friendships are the exception and not the rule. I feel sorry for the rest of the world if that is indeed the case.