Circle of Trust

The Eight Minute Friend

Why don’t we call a friend in need?  Why don’t we call somebody and say, “I’m struggling” or “I’m hurting?”  Maybe it’s because we think everybody has their own problems and we don’t want to burden them with ours.  Maybe we are ashamed.  Maybe we are embarrassed.  Maybe we confuse vulnerability with defeat.

Most of us, and we are all guilty of this, offer to support our friends when they are hurting or in pain.  This is like going to buy insurance when the house is on fire.  During the good times, we ignore the possibility that hard times might be ahead.  When the stock market is rallying, nobody thinks about the crash.

During the high times with friends, during the celebrations and amongst the high-fives, we need to find a way to say, “Hey, this is amazing!  But we have to remember that when this feeling goes away, we have to be there for each other.”  In other words, we have to buy the insurance policy early.  We have to have the policy in place.  Doing so is not being a Debbie Downer—it is not bringing down the good times.  It is simply being prescient, perceptive and prepared.

Then, when the time is needed, making that call is easy.  Asking for help is easy.  It actually feels powerful to make that call and cash in on that policy.  It not only reinforces the friendship, but it invigorates it.

I was talking to a friend of mine, and she told me she went through a tough spell.  It was pretty bad.  And I was angry—I asked her why she didn’t call me.  “I’m the one you call!” I told her.  She told me that she did reach out.  I didn’t believe her.  She said she texted me.  So I checked my text history.  I had some texts from her that said, “How’s it going?” and things like that.  I said to her, “Do you mean these texts?  The ones that sound like every other text you send me on any other given day?!”  She didn’t have the language to communicate the need for help.

She then told me there is research that shows in times of need, all a person needs is eight minutes from a friend to make him feel better.  Sharing space with a friend for eight minutes makes a difference.  So now, when one of us is struggling, the text is, “Do you have eight minutes?”  That means, “I need you.”  When I get that text from a friend—any of us can do this—I stop the movie, I walk out of a meeting, I walk out of the room, I make the call and talk to that friend for eight minutes.  We don’t need to fix anything.  We just acknowledge they need help, and let them know they are not alone.  Eight minutes.

And for those who don’t want to bother somebody else with their problems, let me make this crystal clear: there is no greater honor that you can give me than sending me a text that says, “Do you have eight minutes?”  In my opinion there is no greater honor you can give a friend than that.  In your darkness and in the midst of your struggle, when you cannot see clearly, there is no greater compliment and gift than to let someone know how much they mean to you than to send that text.  To me, an eight-minute friend is the highest level of friend.

For those who don’t want to bother friends with their problems, how dare you not bother me?  I want to be bothered by my friends.  I want to be bothered by the people I love.

We have other friends too—we don’t eject somebody from our life because he is not an eight-minute friend.  They are fun.  That’s ok.  Our lives are full of them, and they make life rich too.  In a different way.  But I’m not calling them in times of need.

I don’t have a lot of eight-minute friends.  But when I get that text from one of them, I’m walking out of the movie theater to make that call.