This is my friend Danny. Here we sit, on the same bench by the White River canal in Indianapolis, both sweating in the same heat wave. Our Togetherness bench is for the politically homeless. Danny leans more left than I do and I lean more right than Danny does. But neither of us fit into any particular camp. We can’t neatly shunk ourselves into left or right. We want to be curious about people we disagree with. For example, each other.
So we made our own bench. It’s not always comfortable. Sometimes we’re annoyed or even hurt by the big space between us. It can feel personal. We can imagine the other thinks we’re a bad person, representing what’s wrong with society. Sometimes we do project our fears onto what the other represents. We can focus on the space and forget about the bench that connects us.
But then we remember how much more we love puns than the rest of the world does. How much we enjoy correcting each other’s grammar, exploring thrift stores and bookstores, and baking cookies. Our bench is for LotR memes, British shows, croissants, poetry, knitting, and gardening. Our bench is for long conversations about friendship, philosophy, and whether we should wear crew socks like Gen Z or accept we’re irrelevant and uncool.
Some folks want to chop our bench in half. They call what we have unnatural, a friendship against the mode du jour. “Pick a side and stay there,” they say. But we defy them, rebels to the end.
We cultivate what Jonathan Haidt (and probably others) calls a “treasonous friendship”: treasonous against the camps we’re supposed to belong to, fraternizing with the enemy. We talk about all the most contentious topics you can imagine. We rarely agree perfectly, but we almost always give the other something to think about. Sometimes we even change our minds. That’s way more interesting than someone who thinks exactly like I do.
There are many reasons one might sit on such a bench. Sometimes circumstance casts us together with someone who’s our natural political enemy: a relative or coworker, for example. For the sake of the larger good, we try to find common ground. Or, we realize it might be good for us to understand people we disagree with, and good for them, too. The bench is a virtuous pursuit. A third option is that we just really like that person on the bench, and we’ll fight tooth and nail to make it somewhere we both want to sit.
Danny and I met eight years ago at L’Abri. At first our bench was circumstance: cast together for a year in Boston. But it quickly became a bench of liking as the shared boards fell into place, what C.S. Lewis calls the “You too?” experience of becoming friends. The liking has remained, but at times the Bench of Virtue has helped us overcome differences. We know we’ve become more nuanced, understanding, and empathetic because we share the bench. That’s a secondary motive to how much we delight in each other’s existence, but it helps when we think, “What if it were easier? What if they just thought more like me?”
Why do I fear the discomfort of disagreement? I don’t want to hurt or be hurt. I don’t want to be judged and found wanting, especially by someone I love. Sometimes I just don’t want to engage with something contentious. It can take a lot of energy. Sometimes I just want to be seamlessly connected and understood. “Why does it have to be so harrrrd?” cries my peace-loving Canadian, chill west coaster heart.
Yet through my friendship with Danny more than with anyone else, I’ve come to trust that the place of tension and discomfort doesn’t always mean danger. Instead, it can signal potential growth. What used to tell me, “Run for the hills!” now tells me, “What could you learn here?”
Danny and I realized a long time ago that being friends means we’ll hurt each other sometimes. That’s true of all close relationships. But that hurt is rarely harm. We express sadness that we can’t connect in certain ways. But we also know, and tell each other, we value our friendship even more because of all we’ve worked through.
It would be easier for us to maintain ideological purity if we were more likeminded. But our friendship forces us to think coherently, not just buy a package deal. Neither of us are trying to win a debate; we’re curious cats who like to explore together. Danny’s more analytical, me more emotional, and in conversation this has helped Danny become more vulnerable and me more objective. We send each other articles all the time to hear each other’s take.
Sometimes I think, “This is just friendship magic, a natural intuition and connection that’s near-impossible to find.” But I forget that for all the “You too?” moments we enjoy, we’ve also had to work through many “You WHAT?” moments over the years. In doing so, we’ve built resilience. Our recovery is faster. We know what the other person is afraid of and needs to hear. We give each other the benefit of the doubt. A little discomfort doesn’t threaten us.
“And yet it’s still not easy,” Danny says, over croissants at Gallery Pastries.
“No, it’s not,” I agree. “Even after so long.”
Intellectually we know we’re not enemies—we’re for each other. But neither of us wants to live in the other’s ideal world. What does that mean on the grand scale of things? I don’t know.
But in our friendship it means we have to make a third place, not ideal for either of us except that it includes this person we love. Our Togetherness Bench is always in my mind when people say X, Y, or Z about how the world is or should be. “Is that true of Danny?” I wonder. Or, “Could Danny find room on that bench?” I’ve come to wonder how many of my “enemies” are complex people like Danny rather than caricatured extremes.
To love across lines is to always feel a bit conflicted. A lot of the time I don’t know what to think or how to respond. But Danny is one of my dearest friends. We could lounge in cushy armchairs in separate rooms, talking smack about each other’s views with people who always take our side. But we’d rather perch on a hard bench by a skuzzy canal if we can be there together.