The magic of the fleeting friend

Just a few weeks ago I was in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with my family.?

The house we get every year with ?is located dangerously close to one of my true happy places – a fishing pier bar and grill called Fish Heads.

Yeah, I love this place.?For a decade plus it’s kind of just meant “vacation” to me.?You can likely see the appeal in the picture I took in the header.?Completely open air, extending out into the ocean, spectacular views north and south.?Wonderful, hardworking staff that are often still there year after year. ?Great beachy bar food, fresh tuna-bites that are better than any I’ve had anywhere in the country.?30 cold beers on tap.?You can even take that fresh beer and walk down the pier and see what’s biting as you wait for your food.

As you can see,?I could likely write a blog post on this place alone.?

It’s midway through the week and a couple of us walked down for lunch while a couple others stayed with the kids. While consuming said tuna bites and sipping a beverage, I received some information on my cellular device that was annoying. Very annoying. The type of information that as a boss you just would just love to not receive while on vacation. But, one of the joys of being the boss is there is no true vacation.?The information is going to flow, work will always be happening, things will find you at all times. That’s what we signed up for, no pity required.

So this particular information was annoying enough that as the meal finished I looked at my wife and said… “Ummm, I think I’m going to stay and decompress a minute before I head back to the house”.

Translation, I need another beer.?

She nods in understanding, not her first rodeo in witnessing mood-shifting messages coming into my device day or night. ?Sometimes I just need a few minutes.?Don’t we all??

The bar stays pretty crowded as it turns out the vibes I adore are appealing to many. It stays busy. I see two empty seats and claim one.

As I order a hazy IPA, a gentleman sits next to me in the other. “How is that one?” he asks.?

“I’ve been enjoying it, super citrussy which makes for good day drinking”, ?I replied.?

He looked kinda like one of those younger dudes that would drive an old VW van.?Skis in the winter, surfs in the summer kind of guy. We get to talking. We talk some more.?

I look down and just over an hour has gone by.?“Oh shit man, I need to check in with the fam.”?

Amidst the topics we covered, I learned that he was down from New Hampshire visiting his parents who get a beach house in the Outer Banks every year.?He is a bit nomadic but he and his girlfriend have settled there, she has a teaching job and he is working on ski lifts on a few mountains.?His loving parents beg for he and his siblings to come to the beach every year because they live all over and it’s a rare opportunity to come together.?He was the only sibling that made it this year, and his girlfriend had to cancel last minute because their old dog was struggling a bit.?“Then again, my parents aren’t getting any younger either so we decided to divide and conquer”.?

This wasn’t an earth shattering conversation, the world didn’t shift, the course of my life didn’t change. But that problem that annoyed me, it was a distant thought. My mood was positive. I felt like I was on vacation.?

To my surprise, as I get up to go (a little wobbly, as we had been buying each other’s beers over that hour plus), he says “hey man, since you’re staying right here – let me shoot you a text when I come back.?I try to get out of the old folks home now and again, maybe we can have another round if you are close.”

“Sure dude, I am probably here a little too often – let me know when you swing through”.?

Sure enough, the next evening I get a text.?“Heading back to Fish Heads around 730, I’ll be there if you are around”.?

I remember the look on my friends and family’s face when I announced I was going back up there.?It was kind of like the room stopped and everyone looked at me like.. what??To meet the dude from yesterday??I think the phrase “Cool man-date bro” was uttered by someone.??

This time, I took my 10 year old son Cannon with me.?He sat right at the bar, ordered a virgin Painkiller, and met my new friend Chris.?I didn’t want to stay away from the family for long, so I had a single beer, Cannon had his fruity mocktail, we shook hands and wished each other well, and that was that.?

Most likely, I will never see or speak to Chris again. ?I saved his number, but it’s not like I will ?randomly text this dude, nothing about what transpired had any type of lasting impact – aside from these words I am writing here.?

But let me tell you about the magic of the fleeting friend. ?Why these exchanges and experiences renew my belief in humanity.?Why I find them fulfilling and rewarding enough to seek them – and loved the fact that Chris spoke to me.

In those moments, two human beings are intrinsically trying to see the good in the other.?There is no history to pick apart motives and bitterness towards a past experience.?There is no pressure of what may be or fear of what may not.?It is this small and expiring window of time in which two or more individuals are getting all that they need from each other. ?Companionship and the belief that there is good in all walks of life and that you might have the pleasure of encountering it at any time. ?

That first sentence in that paragraph.?The part about people who are trying to see the good in the other.?Put yourself in that stool, picture that environment, and feel what I am describing. ?Without even knowing it, you will cast aside judgements and prejudices and you will believe with every cordial word spoken that this is a good person, they are not here to cast any negativity in your life, and they are seeking the same thing you are in that moment.?In the world we live in today, in the land of optics and gamesmanship on social media, the motive questioning in everyone’s decisions, the propensity to identify someone with a past mistake – this is what happens when all of those pressures are cast aside and we just exist in the moment.?We want them to be good and that simple desire is what actually brings the good out of them.

Man, if this philosophy could be applied in our not-so fleeting relationships.?Much harder, yes. But possible to swing the pendulum in that direction? Yes.

That is the lesson, and the magic, ?of one of my favorite little phenomena of life. The fleeting friend.?