I was going through some old newspaper columns today when I pulled out one I had been saving for years. The story had appeared on the front page of both the Detroit Free Press and USA Today.
The headline read:
“Study: 25 Percent of Americans Have No One to Confide In.”
I stopped and read it again.
No one to confide in.
Is there a lonelier sentence than that?
According to research published in the American Sociological Review, the average American had gone from having three people with whom they could discuss important matters to just two. Even more troubling, one in four Americans said they had no one at all.
The sociologists offered many of the explanations you might expect. People live in the suburbs and commute to jobs in the city. We walk around with headphones covering our ears. We retreat behind televisions, computers and smartphones.
But we cannot blame the machines for everything. After all, we are the ones choosing to disappear inside them.
I think the problem may begin much earlier—perhaps as far back as high school.
Many of the people we consider our closest or lifelong friends entered our lives when we were young. Stephen King captured that feeling perfectly in The Body, the story that later became the film Stand by Me:
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12.”
There is a reason that line stays with us.
When are the strongest friendships formed? Usually not while we are racing from one scheduled activity to another. They are formed while riding the bus home from a game, lying in the grass, kicking a can down the street or sleeping on the floor of a friend’s basement. They grow during long conversations, shared secrets and those uncontrollable fits of laughter that leave everyone gasping for breath.
Friendships may be photographed at parties, reunions and celebrations, but they are forged in much quieter moments.
Some of the guys I knew when I was 13 are still men I can call today. The friends with whom I shared midnight pizza and endless conversations in high school are still people I can confide in more than half a century later. We did not realize it at the time, but all those seemingly ordinary hours were building something that would last a lifetime.
A trusting friendship needs room to breathe. It needs time when nobody is competing, accomplishing or staring at a screen. It needs hanging around, listening, laughing and sharing even the boring moments.
Perhaps that is something parents should remember when deciding what their children must accomplish—especially during the summer. There is value in allowing young people to slow down, wander a little and spend unstructured time with the kids who live nearby.
Those kinds of summers may not produce diplomas, certificates or trophies.
They may produce something far more valuable:
A lifelong friend—and someone to confide in when life becomes difficult.
The Valley Viewpoint 