What? You don't?
The beauty of different hobbies among friends
I have friend named Suzy. Her dining room is filled with the arms of vining plants. Strings of green pearls dangle from the end table and trailing jade stretches toward the floor. Buds of a plump Christmas cactus sit next to the start of a spider plant, awaiting a bigger home. Clippings become thriving plants in her capable hands, while my potted plant withers from neglect. I don’t think I have a green thumb.
I have another friend named Jillian with an entire bookshelf full of games. She quickly learns each set of rules and strategies, and let’s face it—often wins. Complicated world-building poses no problem for her, while I try desperately to keep track of each rule. I don’t think complex games are my thing.
I could speak of many more who delight in forms of play so different than mine: Friends who relish a night on the couch with the Bengals or another who can fold a perfect tiny paper crane. Some piece together quilts with expert precision, while others decorate their homes or wardrobes with impeccable fashion. I can’t do these tasks very well, and I don't really enjoy them.
Ironically this reality is often reciprocated. Most of my friends have no interest in rendering beef fat with me, nor in transforming it into soap. My weekend spent camping or night devoted to making sausages is far from their idea of play and rest.
C.S. Lewis famously once said that friendship is birthed when the one says to the other, "What! You too?”1 The thought holds much truth, but the older I get, the more I learn it doesn't always have to be.
We’re all different, after all. Through our fourteen years of marriage I’ve often quipped to my husband, “I’m not sure there is anybody quite like you or me.” And there isn’t. God created image bearers with complex personalities, desires, and interests. Nobody thinks the same, nor plays the same- not even my husband and I. We were made as distinct creatures, united in the Imago Dei, but displaying it in different ways—you as this one and me as that one.
Ephraim Radner writes, “Nothing among all created things, is equivalent with anything else.” He goes on to see how friendship flourishes upon this inequality:
“I love and can love, another person, not because they are “like me,” or because they deserve my love, but only because they are not me, because they are utterly unlike me…I can love them because they are a creature, which simply means because they are God’s creature. 2
Every friendship we enter into is filled with differences, for that person is not us. This is a good gift because it pulls our eyes up to the Father who made us both. For as Radner says, the more we uncover the particulars of the person beside us, the more we understand just how “fearfully and wonderfully made” each of us really are (Psalm 139:14).
Perhaps we need the reminders of the You, don’t? as much as the You, too? Even the smallest differences of how we spend our free time—with plants, games, sports, or puzzles— give us the opportunity to move our hearts in worship “towards the overwhelming beauty of God”.3
It’s ok I don’t have a green thumb like Suzy. It’s perfectly fine that she dislikes camping.4 It’s not a complete loss when your friend doesn’t get your love of books, and it’s not a mistake that your spouse doesn’t like running. Nobody will be like you, and that’s the beauty of it. Stop looking, and spend time discovering more about the person next to you. Let’s uncover who God made them to be, and who he is shaping them to become by his Spirit. For there, in the difference, we find the beauty of the Maker.
Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves, p. 82.
Radner, Ephraim, A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life, p. 184.
ibid. p. 185.
I’m going to admit, this is hard to write, but yes, deep down I mean it. :)