The Company You Keep
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 25 July 2010 01:00
- Written by Donna Davis
Last year, my mom moved back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire - the town she grew up in. Her high school is now senior citizen housing and she has an apartment right where the art room used to be. In addition to this daily walk down memory lane, she’s been eager to visit other familiar haunts. Together, we’ve checked out the railroad trestle bridge her brothers coaxed her into crossing as part of a shortcut into town. The millpond that froze over for good skating in the winter and where fireworks lit the night sky every Fourth of July. The hospital in which she nursed newborn babies and where her own child - my little sister - was born. Coming back to this place, with its Downeast accents and salt sea air, has sparked so many memories for her and the stories are spilling out.
The stories are filled with all the familiar phrases of my childhood. Perhaps you can claim some of them from your own childhood, whether it was a New England one or not. “God helps those who help themselves.” “Laughing leads to crying.” “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” “Pride comes before a fall.” All those conversation stopping or starting phrases employed by the aunts and great-aunts to cap off a story, prove the point, sum it all up. Heads would nod, no more need be said. These adages always felt larger than the sum of their parts. They seemed to carry the weight and wisdom of the ages, leaping across countries and centuries - from Aesop to Shakespeare to Ben Franklin to my grandmother’s kitchen table at 485 Lincoln Ave. It may be that families add their own special twist by choosing which ones bear repeating - and which ones don’t.
Clearly my own memories have been stirred as I’ve accompanied my mom, and one adage in particular keeps re-surfacing: “Be careful of the company you keep.” This one put its roots down in my teenage years. At the time, I had the strong impression it was being offered by way of instruction rather than as something nice to know. The instruction I took from it translated into cautioning - about how the world can be quick to condemn, that one’s actions may have unintended consequences, a generalized sort of heightened awareness about what the neighbors might think.
It’s in a teenager’s nature to scoff at such concerns; it’s the business of an adage to hold the grain of truth that keeps it living on. The grain of truth in this saying - that humans will glance at a situation and make an immediate judgment - has generated recent research into what is called the adaptive unconscious. It’s the part of the human brain that takes in a snapshot of information and leaps to a conclusion so we can make very quick decisions. This is the part of our brain that just knows that driver is going to bully through the four way stop at Lowell Road and Barrett’s Mill or when a toddler on top of a stone wall is contemplating jumping rather than continuing to simply balance. When Big Tom, one of the running buddies Richard read about earlier, sees his middle child hanging out with the meth-heads, his heart and stomach and adaptive unconscious probably all lurched to an instant response: “Oh, no, this does not bode well.” The adaptive unconscious doesn’t always get it right, but there’s enough truth there to keep at least one adage alive.
In his book Vital Friends, Tom Rath points to another grain of truth embedded in this saying. He tells about a female colleague who dated a competitive wrestler. Whenever the wrestler was prepping for a match by bulking up with ice cream and pizza, the colleague ate right along with him. At the time the relationship ended, she was 15 pounds heavier. The story raised questions for Tom Rath. Since he leads one of the branches at the Gallup organization, he could go looking for answers with a Gallup poll. He found that if your best friend has a very healthy diet, you are five times as likely to have a healthy diet yourself. Then he surveyed people about their best friend’s level of physical activity. He looked closely at the group who had a best friend who was not physically active. Not one of them was very physically active either. As Rath puts it, “Even if these findings are confounded by other variables, it appears that your best friend might just shape you in a more literal way than you ever imagined.” Be careful of the company you keep, indeed.
There’s clearly a dark side to this adage: the company you keep can sully your reputation and lure you into becoming a couch potato. But what if we turn all that gloom on its head and come at this another way? Do you suppose that if we spend time with people who are kind and honest and brave, some of that goodness rubs off on us? Surely that is so. I look at all of you and know that in the seventeen years I’ve been part of First Parish, so much goodness has rubbed off on me.
There have been meetings where members have shed their ardent, well-considered stances to embrace an outcome that works for everyone. People who stretch beyond their financial comfort zone to make their annual pledge. I’ve sat in chairs pulled into a circle when you have shared the stories of your lives - with bravery and honesty. I have watched and listened and learned.
In this sanctuary on Sunday mornings, we remember how good it is to pay attention, to give the lens a quarter turn. Music washes over us and through us. We breathe. We breathe in the Transcendental air of Concord. We breathe in the poetry of Rumi and Wendall Berry. We keep company here, and I know I am the better for it. I bet you would say the same.
One last reading of this little adage, and I promise I’ll give it a rest. What if we say: Be care-full, be full of care for the company you keep? I think that’s what the Running Buds from Lauren Groff’s book are doing. These men have run together for 29 years. The running in and of itself is clearly important to them. They would all score quite nicely on Tom Rath’s survey about friendship and level of physical activity. But I think this early morning ritual has grown beyond the desire for increased aerobic capacity. Here’s a bit of that passage again:
...we, the Running Buds, are together, moving...There is sometimes no conversation but companionable spitting, and sometimes we talk of our families, of our problems...Oh, we know such things about one another, such dark things, even when we haven’t spoken them. There is something in the rhythm of the run that tells them, something that spreads our sorrows into the heads of the others and gives us some solace, though unspoken.
The coming together, the being together has taken on a life of its own. Many of you have had similar experiences. There are the members of an aerobic dancing class whose joints collectively quit and they now convene as an Aerobic Dining Club. There’s the group that meets by the monument every Saturday morning at 8 AM, rain or shine, for a run - The Church of the Road - although more of them are walking these days. In this morning’s Globe, there’s an article about a Carleton-Willard man whose bike-riding pals supported him through a tough bout of lymphoma and they are back to their Monday morning group rides along the Minuteman Bikeway.
On the path around Walden Pond, out on the Battle Road trail, hands-deep in the newly turned soil of community gardens, sometimes we talk. We name what is true. As theologian Nelle Morton says, we “hear each other into speech.” Sometimes we look into each others eyes, sometimes not. Hearts are cracked open, souls are laid bare. We bear witness. There is ...something that spreads our sorrows into the heads of the others and gives us some solace, though unspoken.
A final word from the Running Buds:
We have run through the dark orange days of July, run through the summer mornings soft as mouse fur, through the drizzle, through the baking heat, through the scent of weakening gardenia, under the wisteria draped on the covered bridge. By now we have run ourselves plumb into August, though this year has been hard on us.
...Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you’ve run through the hard part, you will remember no pain.
We are there for each other through it all. Through the cycles of the seasons and the changes in our towns. Our bodies passing from youth to middle age into old age - with hips that click and lungs in revolt. Lives going in unexpected directions. Through the hard parts. When it hurts and when it hurts worse. Everything changing. Everything except the promise to do it together.