I generally think I'm a pretty self-aware person that has a solid grasp on why things are the way they are in my life, but there's one phenomenon I've always had a hard time explaining: why so many of my friends seem wildly different from myself.
It's counterintuitive. Common interests are not just the foundation of many friendships, but a lack thereof is the splinter in many broken ones. Yet I look at the people I surround myself with and, as much as I love them, more often than not I think to myself, "You and I could not be more different, so how the hell does this work?"
A few weeks ago, I was reading Bono's new autobiography Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and there was a part that made me think I've found the answer. In the passage, Bono, a very devout and very public Christian, is talking about why he gets along best with the unreligious.
"Even while totally absorbed in all this, I had no doubt that I preferred the company of so-called unbelievers. It’s not just that some of the finest people I’ve known don’t subscribe to any particular faith tradition; it’s more that people who openly profess faith can be—how shall I put this?—such a pain in the arse. In a world where it’s impossible to avoid advertising, I don’t want the person next to me hard selling their take on the Big Questions. Live your love is the right answer.
I hold to that line attributed to Francis of Assisi, who told his followers, “Go into the world to preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words."
It changed the way I thought about why people are friends. Maybe it's not about common interests at all. Maybe it's only about the values underpinning those interests.
In that example, Bono is clearly a person who values action over words, and that’s something he’s more consistently found in the non-religious than the faithful even if he himself is very religious. Similarly, no matter how my political beliefs have shifted over time, my close friends have almost always been pretty staunch liberals because in my experience they're way more open-minded, which I enjoy. Although I can often (embarrassingly) count my annual book intake on one hand, I've noticed a ton of my friends are voracious readers, maybe for the same reason I'm writing this blog post at 11:02 pm on a weekday: a love for hearing and grappling with new ideas.
If you have a T-Rex obsession in kindergarten, odds are your best friend in the class will be the other kid with the T-Rex obsession. But as you grow, slowly but surely, maybe the more important question isn't what you like but why you like it.
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