Undividing #5 - How Friends Keep Us Sane In A Crazy World

Plus Kindness As A Currency, and Thinking Like A Rebel.

Hello everyone and welcome to Undividing #5—three thank yous to begin.

To all the new subscribers, a big hello to you folks who’ve joined us here in undividing our world and ourselves. Thanks for coming for the ride.

Thank everyone who wrote to say how much they’re enjoying Undividing. When you start something new, it’s a weird thing; you don’t know what it is, you’re figuring out how to do it, and not sure how it’s landing. So, thanks for letting me know.

And big thanks to a couple of folks who forwarded it to others. My hope always was that we could build a community here and this is how it starts. It’s means a lot when something is recommended from a friend.

Speaking of friends, that is the very thing I zoomed in on this week. In good times and in these uncertain times, our friends are the ones who help undivide us.

Undividing The World: Friendships. Maybe it takes till you hit your fifties like me, but I find the older I get the more I appreciate my friendships, put more into them, and get so much back in return you can’t put any kind of number on it.

Undividing Ourselves: Kindness isn’t just a virtue. It’s a hard currency. Actually, make that a soft currency. Spend it well.

Undividing Extra: A book that taught me the value of thinking like a rebel. And maybe you too.

Onto undividing the world my friends…

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Would you like to buy me a coffee?

Undividing is my gift to the world. The biggest way you can pay me, and everyone, is by putting things you learn here into action in yourself and in the world.

That said, I would also appreciate your financial support to keep it going. A paid subscription is like buying me a coffee a month. And you get four Undividing newsletters and four Emotions Diaries. It’s a deal, it’s a steal.

Or if you just want to help out with buying me a single coffee, that would be amazing too. I take mine black, no sugar.

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Undividing Our World: Friendship Is The Greatest Undivider Of All

Two things converged this week that inspired this Undividing.

1. In one morning reading the news I got updates on wars, national divisions, layoffs, apocalyptic weather, data theft, refugees, famines. I had to hunt to find a story that made me feel good.

2. I realised my friend Uli and I will have known each other for 20 years next year.

Me and Uli rocking 2 decades, who wore it best?

In all the divisions around this planet, both now and in decades past, it’s friendships where we continually find our love, sanity, and support. I don’t need to tell you about any time a friend all but saved my life, because it’s happened to you.

So instead of this week focussing on a problem in the world to undivide, I want to instead focus on what’s always been the best solution to undividing ourselves and our world, and that’s our friends.

The Definition Of Friendship

In 2016, I did a year of no social media. I called it JOMO, the Joy Of Missing Out. When I deleted all my accounts, I went through all the people I wanted to send my phone number to. There were only 11.

It made me wonder, who were all these hundreds of other “friends” I’d worked so hard to gather? To be “liked” by? I came across a definition of friendship at that time that I love and still cannot find the source. So I’m going to say I came up with it until someone else claims it ;)

“Friendship is what happens between two people when they are together.”

How great is that? There’s just something magical and irreplaceable about being physically present with another human being you enjoy. There will never be an app for that.

You could even say that spending time with a friend is the greatest act of mutual self-care you can make. Not that insanely expensive candle you bought (guilty).

And if you think about it, friends are your historians. Take me and Uli in the photo above—20 years of boyfriends, breakups, fashion choices, travel, midnight chats, clubbing, marriages, divorces, professional lives, and shared secrets. If we were TV shows, we’ve both been main characters, front row audience, and in the writer’s rooms for each other for two decades. We’ve seen every season of us.

Another friend once remarked that, “friends are so much better than lovers because you don’t have to have a type.” Oh so true. What a beautiful way to think of all the people we can love like friends in our lives.

Speaking of types though, Aristotle had a lot to say on that.

Aristotle said there are three different kinds of friendship

Photo by Jaseel T on Unsplash

I’m guessing Aristotle had a lot of friends since being a philosopher in Ancient Greece was probably like being Mr Beast, BC. Here was his friend category breakdown:

1) Friendships based on utility, in which one or both of the parties gain something as a result of the friendship (these days we’d say someone we “networked”, or like becoming friends with someone because you think they can help you. Case in point I have great friends in LA, and I also had a lot of “LA friendships” when I was a screenwriter.)

2) Friendships based on pleasure, or those centred around pleasant experiences (a party friend, a friend that you connect with purely over a hobby).

3) Friendships based on virtue, in which both individuals share the same values (people whom you admire and respect, and align with on what’s important in life. You don’t have to agree with all their opinions if you agree on mutual values).

I like these definitions. I’ve had great friendships in every category. And every friend is like a song, unique in their own way. And their only common genre is that I love them.

But it’s the third type of friendships, based on virtues, that I treasure more the older I get. Justin and I have known each other since high school. We can not have talked for a year, and the moment we are in each other’s company we dive into the depths of our everythings, because in terms of virtues we are never divided.

When I was chasing the American dream and climbing the corporate ladder in the US, my friendships (and my marriage) were things I shoved between meetings and business trips. Never again.

Because when I thought I was going to lose everything in my divorce (and nearly did) I suddenly realised all I would have left were my friends, my family, and my skin and everything underneath it. Everything else is just Instagram.

Friendship: Let’s drop the science

As far as the scientific community goes, it’s almost like, what don’t friendships do for us?

They give us confidence and bolster our sense of self, especially during the rough, tough, and my-God-I’ve-had-enough times. They increase our sense of purpose and belonging.

And they significantly influence some of our most important behaviors. If you have a friend who quits smoking you become 36 percent less likely to start lighting up. And vice versa. If our friends adopt healthy behaviors, like regular exercise, we become much more likely to do the same. Friends beat fitness trackers.

The Mayo Clinic had this to say - Adults with strong social connections have a lower risk of many health problems. That includes depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy weight. In fact, studies have found that older adults who have close friends and healthy social supports are likely to live longer than do their peers who have fewer friends.

In other words, the people we surround ourselves with have an enormous impact on our lives. In many ways, they shape it and they extend it.

LGBTQ+ Folks & “Chosen Families”

You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.

I love my family. I have a great relationship with my brother, mum, and dad. I’m lucky. Not many people can say that. And especially not people from my community for all the reasons you already know.

So we really pioneered this idea that the people we friend, are our blood. And more and more, people outside the community are adopting this chosen family idea.

The majority of LGBTQ+ folks don’t have kids, it’s not the default for us. And when you factor in that populations all over the world are aging out because people are having less children it’s really only our friends that more and more people have to look forward to in our older age.

Creating small retirement communities for us and our friends is becoming a hot topic in the LGBTQ+ and hetero worlds.

Alok Menon, who I think is one of the greatest thinkers from our community, talks in this podcast about how they put as much love into their friendships as they would a lover: I particularly love their idea of “friendship as the highest form of love.” (3:46)

And before that, a great example of how their friendship with a blonde, blue-eyed, evangelical survived their coming out because of the length of time they had already been friends.

Sorry, I’m doing something with a friend

So, I think we can all agree that friendships are pretty amazing. And the only thing that we can rely on over time. And 100% in our control to find, grow, and enjoy.

I hope one day when I’m super ancient, that my friends and I are like a garden of great oak trees that grew together over time, our roots all connected below the surface.

But also it’s hard to find and foster good friendships with people these days in our disconnected online world. I don’t want to ignore that. In fact there is a crisis of loneliness globally and the only known antidote is more meaningful real-life contact with others. We are social animals after all, it is in our DNA to socialise. It’s food.

I came of age in a time before smart phones, and honestly, have never really had a problem making friends. But I couldn’t tell you how I do it, or how you’d do it in this day and age. I just kind of talk to everyone I meet. It’s my superpower and I’m grateful for it.

However, googling round, I found this video which is charmingly stick figured, made by a millennial, who has his 16 tips on making friends as someone who grew up with smart phones and internet. Pretty good list actually. I’m stealing a couple from here.

Here’s my five best thoughts on keeping friendships that I’ve picked up over the years:

• Friend Night - Put it in your calendar. I reserve one night a week where I do something with a friend in real life. This is not something I do with my boyfriend. This is me, and a mate or two.

  • It’s also a night to actively “friend” an acquaintance you want to get to know better. You’ve swapped IGs, so be the first to message with an activity in mind.

• Phone a friend - Put this in your cal too. Call a friend once a week (I have a lot of mates I don’t live near) just to check in for no reason.

• VM them when they cross your mind - I do this all the time. It’s immediate, faster and more meaningful than a text, and something worth blowing your cell plan on. And everyone loves to hear a friend’s voice, and how they are remembered.

• Follow up - if I’m talking to a friend while I’m at my desk, I make a note in my calendar if they are having a thing happening - doctor’s appointment, trip, work talk they are dreading, a date - and message them to see how it went.

• Birthday cards - You know I’m a fan. Buy ‘em, send ‘em!

To wrap up, there’s a lot in this world that’s going wrong at the moment. But your friend circle is where it can always go right. Double down on your friends, and in a few years talk about how f’ing crazy 2024 was.

And if you’ve got a friend who you think would enjoy all the above, share this newsletter with them.

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Undividing Ourselves: Kindness As Currency

I think we all feel a lot is being taken from us these days. The attention economy harvests our interest, clicks, and data. But I think there’s a way for us who work on the ground floor of Capitalism Towers, to take our attention back even if for a moment and spend it elsewhere.

In kindness.

Kindness is a universal currency, valued in every culture, every community, every person. An act of kindness costs nothing, but its value is something you find on no stock exchange, or in anyone’s IPO.

Everyday I make a point of spending a kindness. That’s seven a week. Here’s a few this week.

• I thanked a finance person who was late in paying. She owned the problem, told me how she would solve it, and by when. And then she did it. So I spent that day’s kindness on a non-essential, and probably unexpected, thank you email for her professionalism. 2 minutes.

• I let the person behind me in the supermarket line, who had just a stick of butter to buy, go in front of me and my shopping cart. 60 seconds.

• I let the guy with two kids take the two seater I had on the tram. 2 seconds.

But here’s the thing. It’s the ripple effect. It’s the kindness they do for another. It’s the story they tell of someone who did something nice that makes anyone who hears it feel good about us as a species. Which in turn might make them spend a kindness too.

A friend just got back from Greece, and of all the stories he told, his favourite was the one about the old lady in the supermarket who showed him how to weigh his produce, and then talked him through the different local greens for sale.

It was that very story of kindness that inspired this post.

Spend a kindness this week. Hell, spend seven. Or even more.

And let me know what happens.

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Undividing Extra: Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas was a huge inspiration for Undividing; it changed the way I thought about us as a species. Divisions by their very nature involve people who think alike, isolating themselves from people who think a different way. But what his book explains is how unconscious this process can be.

Rebel Ideas examines the power of cognitive diversity – the ability to think differently about the world around us—”how to be more creative, how to collaborate in a world being more interconnected, and how to break free of the echo chambers that surround us all.” 

Syed demonstrates these concepts through case studies; the CIA pre-9/11, a fatal Mount Everest expedition, white supremacy in the USA, to the COVID-19 crisis and more.

The one that stuck with me the most, was how our very evolution as a species only occurred because of diversity—it flipped every thought I had about evolution on its head with a scientific take I didn’t see coming.

My top five take-aways:

• We should seek cognitive diversity instead of intellectual conformity. Syed highlights the dangers that homogenous institutions carry silently with them, and shows how teams are better at solving complex problems when they bring insights from different regions of the “problem space”.

• Different types of hierarchy and status can affect the way that information flows in a group. Syed talks about Dominant leadership styles, which can stifle people feeling they can speak up. Introduces the idea of the destructive power of the HIPPO—Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

• Why are some companies and organizations more creative and innovative than others? Syed talks “recombinant innovation” – where you take two ideas from different fields or backgrounds, and join them together – the old and the new, the left and right – coming together to make new things.

• The value of the outsider perspective. Immigrants are twice as likely to become entrepreneurs. And Harvard Business Review has shown that companies founded by immigrants grow faster and survive longer—the advantage of seeing things from a different perspective.

• The Internet brings with it big risks because despite its size, it just exposes you to more people who agree with you. As Syed says ‘For all its promise of diversity and interconnection, the Internet has become characterized by a new species of homogenous in-groups, linked not by the logic of kin or nomadic tribe, but by ideological fine-tuning.’ Diversity of feedback and input is so critically important in seeking a balanced view.

If you’re seeking a place of rational thought, and a way out of these divisive times we live in, this is a wonderful handbook.

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The power of friendship, seven kindnesses, and a fantastic read for anyone interested in the science of undividing. If you think someone you know would enjoy Undividing, forward it to them. Let’s keep building this thing.

Till the Emotions Diary on Thursday, big undividing hugs to you all,

Karl

P.S. Speaking of books, How To Burn A Rainbow just picked up two huge independent book awards—Reader’s Favourite and Best Indie Book Awards for LGBTQ+ Memoir!!!

You can pick one up from Jeff at the US Amazon store (where it’s still in the top 25 LGBTQ+ biographies in Germany!) or from Ru Paul’s Allstora who now ship internationally. Or order one at your local bookstore.