One of the consequences of a highly mobile life is that few of my friends know each other. I’ve lived in nine widely spread cities across three countries, with periods of months spent in other places. Like most English university students, I moved away from my approximate hometown (I’m not sure I have any right to use that word) at 18, and again every three-five years, for decades.
I’d had few friends at school, and stayed in touch with only one. I made some close friends at university, who spread around the world after three years; a few more close friends as a PhD student, who did the same; and a few more each time I had a baby or relocated, but most of them have moved as much as I have. I have many beloved friends, but I’ve never been part of a gang.
I met my oldest friend when we hid behind the same curtain at someone’s seventh birthday party, both of us clutching books and escaping organised fun. I befriended another woman when we rolled our eyes simultaneously during chat about getting back into your pre-pregnancy jeans at a mother-and-baby group, another when I stood near the door of a book launch, trying and failing to force myself over the threshold into the mingling crowd. It’s fair to say that many of my friends share disinclination for group activities, which is one reason why I tend to see them one or sometimes two at a time.
Especially after living in two small countries, where other people’s networks are dense, I’ve come to see that this starburst-shaped social network has liberating aspects. There is little gossip, not much sense of being talked about. The worry about “what people will say” goes away when the people who might say it don’t know each other.
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That makes it easier and more natural to be open: I can tell one person about trying aerial yoga, another that I’m knitting a pink jumper, another that I spent an afternoon when I could have been writing making jam, without concern that someone antipathetic to any of these endeavours will think less of me.
Intelligence comes in many forms. Some of them are measured in formal education and exams, but many aren’t
I don’t lie, and very often do tell the same story to different people, but I can choose my audience, for their sake and mine. Someone who is losing mobility to degenerative disease doesn’t need to know about the aerial yoga. Someone who finds clothes utterly boring doesn’t want to hear about the jumper. I might reasonably choose not to tell someone who is frightened of sugar or horrified by domestic frivolity about the jam-making.
I have friends who would occupy each of these categories, friends from a wide range of backgrounds, occupations and political allegiances. I value them all. Some of them would be hard-pressed to enjoy others. But they must, I thought, have something in common. Unless I am utterly promiscuous in friendship, there must be some consistency beyond aversion to literal and figurative team games, and identifying it would tell me what I consistently value in such different people.
[ Sarah Moss: ‘I’m a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic’Opens in new window ]
It turns out to be a quality very similar to that I value in books and films, which is the intersection of intelligence and kindness. There are plenty of people who are clever and not kind, and plenty of people whose niceness is rooted in denial and avoidance of difficulty. Those who can look thoughtfully on conflict and sadness and trouble and still find charity and curiosity are precious.
Intelligence comes in many forms. Some of them are measured in formal education and exams, but many aren’t. All of us know people who are knowledgeable, reflective, open-minded and did badly in school; after a long career in academia, I am no longer surprised to encounter the occasional combination of star-spangled exam results with narrow-mindedness and short horizons. I have friends in employment that is called “low-skilled” (though it certainly isn’t), and friends in high public esteem who combine intelligence and kindness.
Nihilism and rage are easily justified and easily felt, not illogical or foolish responses to the state of the world, and also not good company. A commitment to ease and getting along at any price may be comfortable, perhaps superficially kind, but it’s hard to respect. Where you find deep thinking and kind feeling together – which is in all walks of life and art - cherish them.
