When I was young, I had friends. Some of them agreed with me about almost everything — church, politics, which team was worth shouting at, which movie was worth the ticket. Then there were the ones who didn’t. We had our differences. Sometimes we argued and stood our ground, and neither of us moved an inch.
When all of that was said and done, we went to a movie together. Then we went and shared a pizza at our favorite place.
That was the whole trick, and we didn’t know it was a trick. The argument was real. The pizza was also real. One did not cancel the other.
Time did what time does. Friends moved away. I joined the Navy and never saw many of them again. The memories are still good. They fill me up, and then, from time to time, they turn melancholy, which is a small irony I have never quite made peace with. The same nights that ought to leave you glad can leave you sad, because they are over, and because the table is gone, and because you can remember the pizza and not quite remember every face.
I have friends now who are not of the same persuasion. Most of them — not all — are rather liberal, politically. I have great times with them. We are still building the kind of nights you keep. After a long discussion of our differing theologies, or a debate about the country — funny how the word changes, from argument to debate, as if the years sanded the edges off — we can share a cold beer. Better yet, a charcuterie board and a bottle of wine. That is when we really let loose. We talk about the past. We almost always agree at that point, which is another way of saying the past is large enough to hold us both.
I do not need them to come over to my side of the table before I will pass the plate. They do not need me to pretend I am someone else. The wine does not require a truce. It requires that we stay.
What saddens me now is watching the young.
It is odd. Politically, they stick to one another. If someone holds a different point of view, that person is not argued with. They are not even really heard. They are shunned. No discussion. No argument. Disdain, and then the door. The group gets smaller, or it supports a smaller niche, and the smaller group gets more extreme. I am not sure I understand why. I do know it happens on both sides. Incredibly polarized little rooms, each one sure it is the last honest place on earth, each one thinning the guest list until only the already-convinced remain.
The saddest part is not the volume. Young people have always been loud. The saddest part is what they will never get. They will never meet the great friend who does not vote as they do, does not pray as they do, does not watch the same game, and who would still split a pizza when the shouting was over. They will never find out that a person can be wrong about a candidate and right about loyalty. They will never have the memory that later turns melancholy, because they will not have had the night.
I am not asking anyone to be lukewarm. I was not lukewarm. We stood our ground. Standing your ground is not the same thing as burning the chair the other person was sitting in. An argument that cannot survive a movie afterward is not a conviction. It is a membership card.
People will tell you this is about politics. Some of it is. Some of it is the habit of treating disagreement as dirt. Once a view is dirty, the person who holds it is dirty, and you do not eat with dirty people.
The friends of my youth did not always agree with me. What they agreed to do was remain. That is a smaller word than justice, and a harder practice. It does not trend. It makes a table. The old ways built camaraderie. Not because we agreed. Because we stayed in the room long enough to find out the other person was still worth the pizza. You cannot get that from a group that only lets in the already-convinced.
The world feels like a scarier place when the young will not sit down with anyone who might unsettle them. Not because the arguments got harder. Arguments were always hard. Because the pizza got optional, then suspect, then refused.
I would rather be sad about a night I actually had than be safe from ever having one. My old friends are scattered. Some of them I will not see again. That is the ordinary cost of a life. The extraordinary cost is a generation that never incurs it, because it never lets the other person in the door.
We can argue. We should, if the thing is worth standing on. Then we can go to the movie. Then we can share the pizza. If that sounds simple, it is. Most of the things that hold a country together are simple, and most of them are being treated as naive.
I do not think they are naive. I think they are how I got any of the memories that now make me melancholy. And I would still take the melancholy. It means there was a table, people on more than one side of it, and enough friendship left to order another pie.
