Real Friends.

Sean Maguire, a well-known therapist out of the Boston area, looks at the professor who hired him, making a case of why his most notable patient is friends with certain people, as he yells out, "because any one of them would take a fu***n bat to your head if he asked them to."

That's called loyalty.

Make a list of how many friends you have. Write their names down. And I'm talking about the real friends, not the ones a social network says you have, or how many of them "like your status," I'm talking about the friends who don't look at what time it is before they call. The real friends that call you to make plans with you that don't involve blowing off work to golf on a weekday. The friends you plan a trip with to go hunting or something like that. The friends you know your wife doesn't like, and it's still non-negotiable—the friends who skip the text message and call you to check in.

How big is that list now? Not very big, is it?

It's ironic...

Isn't it ironic that social media was designed to connect us, yet for over a decade has literally done everything possible to divide us?

Isn't it ironic how our society has pushed its own narrative of wealth, happiness, and health on us, yet the closer we feel to achieving them, the more we feel inadequate?

Isn't it ironic how we can be so naive about what we want out of life, as we continually succumb to the grasp of consumerism as if "buying new shit" will fulfill us?

When I look at the world with an honest point of view, with transparency and complete vulnerability, I don't see the world the way I used to. I see a world where a billionaire, wearing ugly AI-powered Ray-Ban glasses, is chasing after an audience, warning them that not using his wearable technology will put them at a significant disadvantage. As he simultaneously publicly spats with another jackass over hiring technologists with bloated super-star-esque salaries, I see him as the representation of what friendship appears to be in our era. Since he is responsible for inventing the very technology that has shaped and redefined friendship, I can't help but wonder which "real friend" I could call in the middle of the night to vent to about this. Not because I care about the status of my friendships (I'm a proud representative of a generation of men who say, "I'll be fine), but because I care about my kids.

Yesterday, as I dropped my son off to play golf with his friends at 7:20 am on a Monday, and then watched my wife take him to the park later that same night to play pickleball after football practice with those same friends, I was filled with a strong reassurance of hope that maybe, just maybe, he will never feel obligated to have to put on a pair of AI powered glasses to see the world through someone else's point of view, but his own.

For that, I am grateful. For that, I thank God.

Speaking of God, didn't someone once say, "If you've got God, you've got a friend?"

Yeah, I'll second that.

Derek