In this episode, we explore why we need the company of ‘those who would share our bread’, to help us keep going when times are hard
In a previous episode, some while ago, I wrote about friends and allies, and how to find the right ones we need for this work of change. This time though, let’s make it a bit more personal, bring it a bit closer to home, either metaphorically or literally, and talk about companions - ‘those with whom we would share our bread’.
When we’re dealing with major change, whether as something we choose, or forced upon us by external events, we’ll need real support and sharing, to help us keep going - especially when the going gets rough. With friends and allies, that support is there, but it tends to be a bit more distant, either literally or metaphorically. By contrast, our companions may bring us that support and sharing on a much more personal level, across several distinct dimensions.
For example, they can give us physical support in tangible ways, living and working beside us every day, sharing the practical challenges of everyday life, sharing meals, sometimes literally as ‘those with whom with share our bread’.
They can give us support in a mental or conceptual dimension, exploring ideas with us, testing, refining, making information useful and more.
They can give us relational or emotional support, helping us feel valued, wanted, helping us to recover and pick ourselves up again when things go wrong.
And they can give us purposive or spiritual support, helping us to maintain a sense of meaning and purpose, help us keep on track to an overall aim or vision. This is particularly important for when we start to wander off course, or, again, when things go wrong enough that we start to lose hope; it’s at those times when our companions help us the most, to bring us back to the purpose, and rekindle hope again.
So who are these companions? Where do we find them? And how can they help? The simplest test is to go back to that definition of ‘companion’: look for ‘those with whom you would share your bread’ - or who would share their bread with you.
Again, the ‘bread’ could be literal; it could be more metaphoric, as in the sharing of ideas and suchlike; it could be any mix of the two. That part really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that sense of immediacy, closeness, here-and-now, combined with that sharing and mutual support.
For many people, maybe most, the most obvious example would be family: parents, siblings, children; one’s partner, spouse, ‘significant other’ or whatever other term of that kind might fit. For some, it’d be a bit broader than just immediate-family, out into a community that’s still local in some form or other, and in much the same sense as that old phrase that “it takes a village to raise a child”. And for some of those, for example, that community might have a more religious flavour, centred around a church or mosque or temple or the like - after all, there’s one religion that literally describes its community in terms of ‘the sharing of the bread’.
But what about those of us for whom those options just aren’t available? How do we find our companions? The short-answer is yes, it can be a bit more difficult, perhaps, but there are ways to do it. Let’s have a look at that in a bit more detail.
As it happens, I fit mostly within that latter group - so yes, this point is definitely important for me. I don’t have family anywhere nearby; in fact all the other members of my birth-family are literally on the other side of the world, ten thousand miles away. I don’t have a partner, or any family of my own; I live alone, in fact have done so for almost all of my adult life. I don’t have any local community that I belong to; I do have neighbours, of course, and we do perhaps wave to each other from time to time, but other than that we all live our separate lives. I do have colleagues that are sort-of companions, I guess, but they’re scattered all around the world, and even the nearest of them lives more than an hour’s drive away from here, which could hardly be described as ‘local’. And to make things worse, I’d arrived back here in Australia on the very day that everything shut down for COVID, reinforcing a bad habit of self-isolating, hermit-style, that I haven’t really found my way out from since then.
So in short, I’d perhaps best be described as almost the stereotypic ‘loner’, in almost every sense, physical, conceptual, relational, professional, spiritual, whatever. Not A Good Idea, perhaps…
And yet, like everyone else, I still need the sharing and support of close companions, but who in my case don’t actually exist - or at least not via any of those usual options.
So how do I solve that conundrum?
Three ways, really - and all of them are ways that others in this ‘loner’ category might well find useful. Especially as probably all of us will find ourselves in this category from time to time, whether or not we have all of the other forms of support and companionship elsewhere.
The first is that I do have a small group of friends and colleagues with whom we all work alongside each other on the same kinds of issues and changes and professional challenges. Those colleagues are scattered right around the world, and none of us are close in any physical sense; yet we’re all close enough in most other ways such that yes, we could reasonably be called ‘companions’, of a kind. And whilst with most it’s unlikely that we’ll ever meet again in person, there’s enough connection via online conversations to help keep everything going, and provide mutual support wherever it’s needed, wherever we can. That definitely helps.
Next is that whilst I don’t really go to any social events as such - in part because I rarely have any chance to hear about them before they’re already over and done - I do make a point to get out of the house and go to a local cafe at least once each week. In effect, it’s community: it’s somewhere that’s consistent, comfortable, where I’m greeted and known, and where sometimes I can talk with the staff about what’s going on for them and for me, and exchange ideas and suchlike. It isn’t the same as a partner or spouse, of course, but in some ways it does have some of that same sense of ‘family’. It takes a while to build up that sense of continuity; but for a loner it is a real form of companionship that’s definitely worth developing.
And last, if there’s no companion around, then just invent one! Okay, this might sound a bit weird at first, and yes, in a sense, this is sort-of like that old childhood notion of the ‘imaginary friend’ - but it’s much more structured, deliberate and conscious than that, a kind of projection of the self to provide support for the self. There’s no ‘imaginary friend’ there as such, it’s just a way of reflecting back on ourselves to provide whatever support that we need. Start with some simple questions: for example, what support do you need? It can’t be physical as such, of course, because it’s only imaginary - but it can still provide just about every other kind of support.
More questions, to help construct this imagined ‘companion’: What’s your vision for your future? What do you see as your purpose in life? What support do you need from yourself to help you get back on your feet when something goes wrong? Those kinds of questions, anyway. And having identified those questions, find the place within yourself from where those answers can come: there will be one, somewhere. And then, having established that place, start a conversation with that place, whenever you need to do so.
So yes, even loners can find most of the help they need, just from looking within themselves. In that sense, learning to be our own companions.
I’ll stop there for now, I guess; but I hope that helps, anyway.
Hi Tom,
Some companions will walk the path with you, others may walk another but as long as we all understand the required destination, we can enjoy the trip and have many stories to tell.