I just had a permanent fallout with someone who could have easily been one of my mentors. However, said almost-mentor (whom I'll just call "Shadow") has one critical flaw, as do most people in the pagan community that I've come across: the Buddy List Syndrome. (Don't laugh, I just coined this term.) This Buddy List Syndrome (or BLS for short) is a disorder plaguing the cyberpgan community at large (and actually, many cowans as well). This disorder leads one to believe that just because someone else is on your buddy list, that they're your friend. This practice is downright DANGEROUS, and needs to be ceased immediately.
This style of naïveté is something that we all claim to have grown out of in second grade. I let you add me to your contact list, and suddenly I'm your best friend in the whole wide world? Hardly.
See, in this world of instant gratification, where you can buy and implement 500 MB of webspace in two hours (like I did for this site) or where you can sail through Arby's drive-thru and have dinner ready in time enough to make change from a $20, we as a collective body assume that this applies to all things. We even expect the IRS e-file to grant us an instantaneous refund (which, for me, took ten days). We expect that our magic will work instantaneously, and with such a "wham bam thank you ma'am" attitude to our magical workings and our interpersonal relations, it's no wonder we keep fucking things up.
What people don't seem to realize is that just because you've been talking to somebody cool for a few days, you aren't their best friend. Just this evening, Tripp Eisen from Static-X (...if you have never heard of Static-X, you shall die in three days...) gave my political standpoint major props, and I'm pretty fucking pumped about that. Sure, I've told people about this, but I'm not going around saying I'm Tripp's best friend. Why? Because I just started speaking to the guy. Now, if Tripp and I exchange correspondence for, say, four or five months and have the opportunity to forge actual bonds of friendship, then and only then will I claim to be Tripp Eisen's friend.
In fact, another spiritual guide of mine whom I haven't mentioned as such, Daven, and I have been corresponding since October of this year. I've always held him in high regard, but only in the last couple of months here have I considered him a friend, because we've done what friends do: we've stuck up for each other, we've exchanged our opinions, we've talked about deep things, and we've shared a few things about our personal lives. We're not inseparably close friends, as those bonds are almost as difficult to separate as the bonds between a husband and wife, and unless the chemistry is exactly right there, those bonds take YEARS UPON YEARS to forge, and just like a marriage are extremely high-maintenance. My father's best friend was Orville Williams for a long time, but since my family moved to the Upper Peninsula in 1991, Dad's seen Orville all of what...twice? They even lost touch over the phone, I believe. It's been a while, and my information isn't current, but my point remains.
See, what Shadow didn't realize is that you can't be someone's friend in three weeks. It all boils down to this: You can't jump in a coven and expect the bonds of perfect love and perfect trust to be there instantaneously. You can't walk into a bar, order a drink, and be the bartender's best friend. I've had two actual intercourses (read: exchanges of discussion - learn what that word means) with Tripp, so at this moment he's simply an acquaintance. I had three weeks of correspondence with Shadow, and to be honest, a few hours of discussion about third-party topics doesn't comprise a true friendship. I've had only a month or so to bond with my band, and while our chemistries are mixing smoothly, we haven't had the time to forge friendships. I've had six months of contact with Daven, and I consider him a friend because we've only just now been able to meet each other's criteria for a friendship. I've had two years of friendship and cameraderie with my fiancée, and for sure many more to come. I've had sixteen years to forge a bond with my brother. I've had twenty (plus nine months' worth of bonus miles) with my mother. See where I'm going with this?
&You can't have an instant friendship. You can't have an instant coven member. You can't have an instant Priestess. We all can agree that instant coffee tastes like shit, and we can all agree that fast food doesn't hold a burnt match to a nice, steak broiled over an open flame, and we can all agree (at least, those of us who have this experience can agree) that a six-hour lovemaking marathon beats a five-minute fuck before the X-files comes on.
See, the point of Neopaganism in general is to get to our roots: when time was measured by sunup and sundown, and not to the exact femtosecond by precision atomic digital clocks, divvied up into precise allotments of time for us to rigidly walk through like mindless golems. By getting back to our roots, we mean basically getting back to a time when we weren't all living by a daily planner. Our culture does not allow this. Our television schedules do not allow this. Our work agendas do not allow this. Our vacation timetables do not allow this. Must we treat our religious life, and the friendships we hold dear, with the same discourtesy and disrespect? Can't we just take some fucking time to smell the roses? Can't we just take some fucking time to show our friends we care? Why can't it be okay if it takes a few months to forge a friendship with someone? Why can't it be okay if it's gotta take us a year and a day to study for initiation? Why can't it be okay if we escaped the rat race, if only within our own culture, and didn't force our Lord and Lady on a timetable? Don't you see what's wrong with this?
I sure as fuck hope you do. Because if I'm the only one who feels this way, we're going to give ourselves one great big collective heart attack.
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