Category Archives: loyalty

Don’t waste my time

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“You’re too damn patient with people, too stupid loyal,” a friend of mine told me, though he used a word different than damn.  He continued: “Former friends, an ex or two , and family members who haven’t acted like family members in God knows how long, and you, Mister Loyal, keep the door open to them! And even worse –  I mean I love you, brother and I’m not saying this to hurt you but to wake you the hell up –  but even worse, you even reach out to some of these folks from time to time and let’m know you care about them and what do you get back? Squat! Stop wasting your time!”

My friend was right – is right still. Recently I’ve been thinking about his heart-filled diatribe, I guess you’d call it. The words, Stop wasting your time, seem to strike a deeper chord. Maybe they always ran that deep did and I’m just now getting it. Wouldn’t be the first time I was slow on this kind of uptake. This kind of uptake being, in part, that who you believe someone is may be entirely wrong. That we sometimes really believe someone to be someone they never were, and never will be. Or, we were right to believe someone’s initial presentation of self,  but the real intimacy that comes with loving bonds in life were too much for them, so they engaged in the age-old art of sabotage. In many if not most cases, the reason they never will be or can’t get back to being themselves is because they are so twisted up in their own unhealthiness, often caused by their history-wounds, they are unable to break free and get the help they deserve.

Some people can’t face the journey that comes with getting free of your history, which is tragic because the freedom to be who you are is a truly wonderful place to be.

Loyalty in the cross hairs

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Nothing unique in saying the beginning of a year is a time of reflection, planning, gauging possibilities, setting a goal or two, among other things. For reasons I’m not inclined to study closely, I found myself thinking about a conversation  I once had with a close friend of mine. Obviously the following is not verbatim, but it certainly captures the essence of things.

Close friend: Why do you stay loyal to people that are not in your life and have in one way or another wounded you?

Me: Well, I don’t stay loyal to everyone who has been in my life but the ones you are talking about are people who, if one knew their history, have been badly wounded in life. Parents dying way too soon, spouse dying, a victims of violent crime, abuse, and so on. It’s not lost on me how desperate one can become when all hell breaks loose so I let them know, if that happens, I’ll be there.

CF: But some of these folks have been pretty nasty to you. Callous, flat out mean at times.

Me: That doesn’t mean I don’t genuinely care about them. Also, the fact I’d help someone in no way means I’ll let them back into my personal life. Only if they own their wounding treatment of me and apologize would I consider that.

CF: But still, why the loyalty?

Me: Because few if any are all one thing. And the few people I retain this loyalty for have qualities to their character that in my mind make them rather extraordinary. I care about them. Having said that, they’d be foolish – anyone would be, actually – to mistake my niceness or my compassion for weakness. I won’t put up with nastiness or dishonesty aimed at me. Doesn’t matter who’s doing the aiming.

CF: But wouldn’t you feel taken advantage of?

Me: The thing is, it’s not about me, it’s about someone getting through a patch of hell in their life. I’ve been on my own, completely on my own, since I was 15. Facing the trauma life dishes out alone is brutal. If one of these people were in crisis and reached out to me, I’d find turning my back on them far more unbearable to live with than helping them.

Loyalty: More Than Just Words

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Eighteenth Century English poet Alexander Pope once said, “Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.” Were Mr. Pope here to talk to, I would tell him, things have not changed. 

American writer William Arthur Ward was right when he said, “A friend is one with whom you are comfortable, to whom you are loyal, through whom you are blessed, and for whom you are grateful.”

I am right when I say real loyalty is hard to come by. Lots of people give it all kinds of flowery lip service: I’ll always be there for you or for them, you can always count on me, of course you’re my friend, your like family to me, or, you are family.  I suspect most of you who read this already know this and I suspect a good many of you have had your hearts and minds bloodied by those who are, well, full of shit.

It’s a curious thing, while many if not most demand loyalty from those in their lives, a majority of those making the demand do not, when the waters get choppy or, when it’s not about them, reciprocate. To paraphrase something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, The true measure of a person’s strength is not where they stand in times of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in times of challenges and controversy.

Here is what I would say to you, my reader, do not give the fact loyalty is often no more than lip service so much control over you that it winds up denying you those who actually will be loyal, come hell or high water. They are the minority, but they are a minority well worth waiting for. I promise you this is so. And why do I make this promise to you, because it is so. Because when you read this blog you have a right to count on my honesty. Why? Because it is the loyal thing for me to do, and you, like all of us, deserve some loyalty in your life.

As for me, I will continue to remain open to the possibility of loyalty in people. However, if I am stabbed in the back, I will respond and, when appropriate, expose the person for being the disloyal creature they are.

LIP SERVICE LOYALTY

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“I would rather come back without my arms and legs then come back without my brother,” said a World War II veteran. He and his brother were part of the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion. His brother was killed the first day. This poignant example of loyalty to a loved one can be seen in Ken Burns’ remarkable World War II documentary, “The War”.


Sadly, this kind of loyalty is rare. What’s equally sad, though the anger that boils up in me when I encounter it delays my feeling sorry for the perpetrator, are the people who tell others they can be counted on if times get tough when, in truth, the can’t be counted on at all. I call it lip-service loyalty. Lip-service loyalists are more than willing to say they are loyal to others as long as they don’t have to be loyal to others.



For those of you who fall into this lip-service category, let me just say, shut your mouth. I mean it. Shut-up. You do damage and wound when you offer up some gussied up sentence about how loyal you are and how much you care. Those who believe you get badly wounded when they find out you are a bullshit artist, an earlier term for the lip-servicers among us.


I am not saying there is no loyalty out there. Recently I took a truly hard hit in life and even wrote an e-mail to those I believed in asking for help. In response ,some folks have been breathtakingly loyal and helpful. And then there were those who didn’t respond at all and those who said they would help and never did. Some years ago I would have told this latter group to go fuck themselves. But I think I’ll just let it go. And that’s not lip service.