DISAGREEING FRIENDS [M, 11-8-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

A friend recently recommended, quite effusively, the TV show, “Maid.” Our friend is very smart, an artist and writer and genuinely good person, so we trust her instincts. “Maid” is on Netflix, and since we just bought a smart TV that has Netflix built in, we feel so with-it when we get to watch a show like “Maid,” that formerly would have been verboten to us. We lasted almost one whole episode.

The title character is likeable enough, although rather monotonous, but all the other characters just make you want to throw up. It’s like watching the news--the stories are different, but all the characters make you want to bang your head on the wall. Good acting, which makes the characters even more disgusting. Apparently that’s what the director wants. Go figure.

How could Anita be so wrong? Well, because she isn’t. Liking or not liking a particular story is extremely subjective. Most of us are even subjective and changeable within ourselves about such likes and dislikes. I often start a book only to lay it aside because it’s no good and then find, when I pick it up again because nothing else is available, that I like it just fine. Go figure.

But surely people are not subject to such variables, the way TV shows and books are, are they? Are we? I mean, if I like a person, won’t everyone else like that person, too? At least—and here’s the crux—won’t all the people who like me also like one another?

I had two friends named Bill. [If you removed Bill, Bob, and John from the English language, half the men would be anonymous, but you’ll find none by those names in the NFL.] They were both smart, scholarly, Christian gentlemen. In retirement, one Bill wrote a column for the local newspaper. I liked it, especially one particular column. I asked the other Bill if he had read it. “No,” he said. “I just don’t like the way he writes.”

But these Bills knew each other, and I’m sure they’d had no run-ins with each other. More importantly, they were both good friends of mine. How could they like me and not like each other at the same time? And that’s just the easiest example. I have friends who both like me but despise each other!

That’s been a difficult problem with me from the time I was a kid--people who were friends to me but hostile to each other at the same time. That didn’t make sense. 

My friends were very important to me. I didn’t have much else going for me, so I took great joy in having friends. I wanted all of them to be happy and have a good time with one another, because that’s what they did for me. I took it as a moral failing on my part if my friends didn’t like one another. I was a bad friend if I could not bridge the gap between them.

I’m afraid my observations in these columns are becoming both monotonous and boring, because I’m going to say, again… that’s just the way life is. That’s one thing old age does for us—learning the limits of logic.

Life doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t have to, at least not where friends are concerned. So, if you like that “Maid” show, please don’t tell me. I already have more non-sense than I can handle.

John Robert McFarland

“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” Alfred Hitchcock