Slow Havamal: 51

[kylec]

In the 51st verse, A false friendship is credited to burn bright for five days, snuffing out on the sixth.

It can be hard at first to tell the difference between a real friendship and a false one. They often both start with a spark that can ignite a very real connection. I don’t believe that all bad friendships result from one or both parties entering with an intent to manipulate and profit. Very often, we’re looking for something that we can’t describe, and we make sure to find it in the nearest suitable vehicle. In both romance and friendship, there’s a period where we’re on our best behavior, and at our most forgiving.

Why does this happen? In my opinion, though nowhere expressed in Havamal, it works as follows:

We make some sort of connection to a person, whether it’s a brief conversation or even a glance. Somewhere deep in our unconscious, a chord rings out. Most people want to understand the world, and quickly. There’s great survival advantage to it. We’re accustomed to sizing up people and situations at a glance. From an outfit, a mannerism, we extrapolate an entire character. Never mind that the results don’t end up fitting our prediction. We’re much better at making those predictions than assessing them and altering our methods.

Essentially, we interact with an archetype, or a category, rather than the person before us. We look for signs that confirm our suspicions, and ignore ones that refute them. Whether the other person is genuine or a con artist, they do the same. To them, I might be “fun guy,” or “easy mark.” Much superficial human interaction is a stereotyped dance of social conventions, and only in rare cases to we transcend these right away. Sometimes, that transcendence is what sparks a real friendship. Often, though, we are failing to sense and interpret the signs that show us the individual behind the generalization.

Hungry for real connection, we dive into the friendship, trying our hardest and offering as much as we dare. As the first days pass in glee, a handful of things begin to nag at our attention. A delayed response, a minor disagreement on where to eat, or a feeling we have to do more listening than talking. What originally might be dismissed as charming quirks begin to lose their appeal. We’ve finally penetrated those categorical relations and moved into sensing the particulars. Still, there’s enough hope and excitement left to maintain the camaraderie.

By the sixth day, those first connections seem trivial in light of their prevailing behavior, and they probably feel the same about us. Now we’re seeing each other as individuals, rather than an extrapolation from a promising spark, and it ain’t as pretty as we thought. I’m not sure if the number of days means anything in Havamal. Maybe it’s intended literally. Or we might be able to substitute any timeline, keeping in mind the general principle. For example, I’ve noticed that in romantic relationships, the six-month mark seems to have a liminal quality, and the only way to pass it is for both parties to accept limits and changes.

Dealing with a person in all their unfiltered glory is hard. The people I know who claim to have a lot of friends seem to be referring to acquaintances who they occasionally visit or text, and often whine or gossip about behind their backs. A true friend, as we saw in earlier verses, is one who can be entirely open to us, and us to them, without fear of harm. It’s someone who we love for all of who they are, not the ways we wish they would be. That kind of honest compatibility is elusive. So is there a way to know sooner, before we commit ourselves to those fiery five days?

The only thing I can think of is to be conscious of what we want and expect of a person when we begin to relate to them. If we know what needs we’re likely to project, we can be more skeptical when they seem to all be met in all their glory. The fire dies when we burn through the dry categories that we use to interact with and assess most people. Even one who turns out to be a true friend won’t fill us with the same joy as the day we established ourselves. But beneath the surface lies an individual with their own needs and desires, incomparable to others. If we can accept the limits and changes that carry us past that threshold, a true friendship glows warm for a very long time.