Friendship

For a while, one of my favorite FB friends was a devout Catholic. We haven't seen much of one another lately because the group where we met went through some changes, causing both of us to quit.

He was sometimes suspected by fellow believers of being an atheist. This reminded me of how some of my fellow atheists have insisted that I was a believer. The truth is simply that we both stood out a bit from some groups which surrounded us: he made no effort whatsoever to convince anyone that his religious faith was rational; and I felt no need to go out of my way to insult every religious believer I met, just because he or she believed. I think those very same things, which caused some people to suspect us of being phonies, may be the 2 main reasons why we got along.

Lately, another FB friend of mine, a Republican, has made a series of very intelligent, eloquent defenses of Black Lives Matter, very critical of many of his Republican friends for refusing to see that "black lives matter" means "black lives matter TOO" and not something along the lines of "white lives don't matter."

That Catholic, that Republican and I have not the slightest inclination to let peer pressure tell us who we can and can't be friends with.

I learned a long time ago not to discuss certain things with certain friends. Maybe that's part of the reason I have friends like these who completely disagree with me about some major issues. They really, really don't want to read some of my blog posts, and I really, really don't want to hear what they say in some of theirs.

And so we don't. Genius!