Be There For Your Friends

I have a rule with all of my friends, which is there's no crying alone.

No crying alone.

No crying alone.

Okay?

That if you are in a state where that level of emotion of you start talking about something that you know tears are going to follow, you immediately pick up the phone and call me or somebody else and there's no crying alone. It's just not allowed. And the willingness to allow someone to sit in mud with you is the. Is what it is to be human. I think it is the greatest honor. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, which is when our friends are struggling, our instinct is to rescue them, to pull them out of the mud, to fix. To fix. And if you're the one sitting in the mud when somebody attempts to fix, even if it's well intentioned, it is a horrible feeling. Just don't do that, you're making it worse. And what true friendship is, is not the desire to fix or pull the friend out of the mud who you really want to see out of the mud, but it's your willingness to sit in the mud with them, to get in the mud and turn to them and say, this sucks, you know, and it's not fun being in the mud with them. You don't want to get in the mud with them, but you choose to get in mud with them until they're ready to say, can we get out now?

But you sit there with them. And that's a friend of mine who is one of those folks. I hadn't talked to him in a while and I called him up and be like, what are you up to? I haven't talked in a while. And he, he opened up and it was intense and I was like, why didn't you call me? He's like, I didn't want to bother you.

And the end of our, the way we ended the phone call is I said, I didn't say, I'm always here, I'll be here. You know, I took my go on sort of mentality. And the way we ended the phone call is like, listen. And he's depressed and he's in a bad place. The way we ended the phone call is I said, listen, don't be an asshole and deny me the honor of being there for you.

You have no right to deny me.

Right.

Very teary day today.