By Stabroek News

Copyright stabroeknews

In today’s world where most persons are very preoccupied with their families’ affairs one aspect of our lives which has suffered immensely is the decline of long-term friendships. It is very easy to cast the blame for this demise by pointing to the lack of time. Is it simply just the time factor? Or are there other mitigating factors at play here?

Here in Guyana, we are all very conscious of the exacting toll migration has taken, and continues to extract, on our society. Most Guyanese can claim to have lost relatives and longstanding childhood friends via this route. The departed, invariably new migrants to North America, the preferred choice of destination, find themselves deposited into a blender of faster and more demanding schedules, where, quite often, they are exposed to much more travel time than previously experienced. As the adaptation to the new environment accelerates, one’s focus shifts away from ‘Back home’ and the longstanding friendships, which in some instances are decades long, begin to recede like an ebbing tide, gradually, then slower, and slower.

As the hands of time tick along, and the vivid memories of the good times from ‘Back home’ dissipate, the boundaries of long-term friendships are challenged. “The distance between us is everything now,” a line from the lyrics of Fra Lippo Lippi’s 1986 hit “The distance between us,” resonates even louder. The migrant, having knowingly, or unwittingly, joined the ‘rat race’ is constantly on the move, invariably trying to make up for missed opportunities. The good friend, still ‘Back home’ has much more time on his/her hands to muse on the departure of their liming buddy. The scenario exposes in the raw that a committed effort on the part of both parties is necessitated to maintain the friendship.

As the wave of migration which commenced in the 1960s, kicked up several notches in the 1970s, 1980s, and the 1990s, long-term friendships were severely tested. The main source of keeping in constant contact was the telephone. Unless the migrant was prepared to do all the calling, which was highly unlikely, the local resident faced a daunting exercise in trying to call abroad. Prior to the early 1990s when the former Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC) was privatised, there were a limited number of overseas telephone lines – these were the days of only land lines, as cell phones existed only in sci-fi films and books. One had to call the overseas operators (they were several on every shift), book the call by giving the other party’s name and number, your name and number, then sit and wait patiently for the operator to call back and connect you to the overseas number. One could wait for hours for that return call, only to hear that the desired party was not at home. Connected calls were hurried conversations as they were timed by the minute and very expensive, and invariably followed by hotly contested disputes with GTC as to the correct billing amount. Unresolved bills could, and often led to disconnection. The feature of direct dialling only became available in the early 1990s. The other realistic form of contact was by letter writing, an onerous task to many, followed by the inevitable wait for a reply. How many long-term friendships managed to survive these challenges?

The rapid development of technology and its application to social culture has facilitated the continuation of many long-term friendships today. Generation Z (1997 – 2012) and Generation Alpha (2013 – 2025) have been weaned on iPhones, Face-book and WhatsApp, and find it difficult to imagine a world without these options. The factors of distance and time are of virtually no consequence to the younger generation who are seemingly quite happy to communicate via text format. Those members of previous generations who have quickly adapted to the new technology, have been doing their utmost to resuscitate long-term friendships which had either petered out, or had been reduced to just exchanges of birthday, sympathy and occasional greeting cards.

Are long-term friendships important? For some persons this matter is a definitive no, as, for reasons which they wish to keep to themselves, they have moved on and prefer to have absolutely nothing to do with the past. Those who have put in the concerted effort to sustain long-term friendships have found that it’s worth the time and energy. In an article published by the American Psychological Association in June 2023 titled, “The science of why friendships keep us healthy”, research was presented advocating the importance of healthy friendships on the brain and the body.

Here is an extract from the article worth a closer read, “A review of 38 studies found that adult friendships, especially high-quality ones that provide social support and companionship, significantly predict well-being and can protect against mental health issues such as depression and anxiety—and those benefits persist across the life span (Pezir-kianidis, C., et al.,Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 14, 2023; Blieszner, R., et al.,Innovation in Aging, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2019). People with no friends or poor-quality friendships are twice as likely to die prematurely, according to Holt-Lunstad’s meta-analysis of more than 308,000 people—a risk factor even greater than the effects of smoking 20 cigarettes per day (PLOS Medicine, Vol. 7, No. 7, 2010).

“In the face of life’s challenges, having a close friend to turn to seems to be a buffer or protective factor against some of the negative outcomes we might otherwise see,” said Catherine Bagwell, PhD, a professor of psychology at Davidson College in North Carolina.

Long-term friendships with childhood and school friends not only keep us grounded by reminding us of where we came from, and who we truly are, regardless of whatever persona we might attempt to portray. In today’s fickle world where image projection appears to be more important than content and substance, who better to turn to when in need of support or advice than a long-term friend?