Camaraderie

The dictionary defines camaraderie as “good fellowship,” usually among a group of people. Or, in another definition, it’s defined as “the quality of affording easy familiarity and sociability.”

But what’s that mean, exactly? This word has come up three or four times in the last few days, so I’m thinking of it as a cluster synchro that I should explore.

One definition I found describes camaraderie as a “spirit of good friendship and loyalty among members of a group.”

Since my work happens mostly in solitude, this definition doesn’t really fit for me except in a general sense, in that I feel camaraderie with other writers I know. We may not see each other often, but we exchange emails and phone calls and Facebook messages. We read each other’s books. We blurb each other’s books. We’re on the same page.

I experience a camaraderie with my animal buddies in that I talk to them, play with them, and they sleep beside my bed, at the foot of my bed – or sometimes in my bed. But that camaraderie is vastly different from the human variety.

We’ve been going to the same dog park for six years and there are certain people I’ve met there with whom I feel a camaraderie. The husband of one woman, a retired nurse, is in hospice and a friend and I stopped by her house last month with wine and goodies just to hang out. She was moved to tears. “I’ve spent so much of my life caring for other people that I can’t get used to people coming here to care for me.”

Another dog park friend is on a list for a kidney transplant. When I see him and his wife at the park, I just want to hug him and assure him it will all work out.

Then there’s the more intimate type of camaraderie that we share with our partners, kids, our siblings. In the best of partnerships, it seems, there’s true camaraderie, a sense that we’re part of a team, that we’re united with – or against – whatever comes our way.

This type of camaraderie ebbs and flows over time, through the course of daily life. I saw it in the marriage of my parents, see it in my own marriage, in the marriages and partnerships of others throughout the years. But it’s not constant. What worked a decade ago may not work now. Or the reverse might be true. We humans are continually changing, evolving, adapting to external circumstances that shift the balance of things. Health challenges, financial difficulties, births and deaths and other pivotal life events impact us in individual ways. Our needs and desires change. The self I was at 18 is not the same self I am now, many years later.

I recently ran across a blog post from a dating site where applicants pay an enormous fee to join and in return, are matched with the ideal partner. The gist is that these matches are made through some in depth psychological analysis rather than, as the blog post pointed out, through the kind of superficial match that happens on a site like Tinder, where matches are based strictly on looks, appearance. Swipe left, swipe right. And how does any of that work out in the camaraderie department? No telling. They don’t post their success rate. The idea is that the people who pay these enormous sum are too busy making money to meet men or women with who they might be compatible.

I Googled images of camaraderie and all kinds of weird stuff came up. People with guns, women listening to each other’s travails, figure skaters executing incredible maneuvers, in camaraderie, I guess, with their own bodies. There were a lot of animal photos, too, like the one at the top of Noah and Nika that exemplifies  my concept of camaraderie. Animals get it completely. We humans – well, we’ve got a ways to go.

In my fiction, I develop camaraderie with my characters. In writing non-fiction, I develop camaraderie with ideas. In life, my camaraderies are mostly intuitive, emotional. I recognize it when it occurs and when it’s not there, I mourn its absence. Maybe camaraderie really is the force that moves the world and its people forward toward something better.

Now that I’ve explored this cluster synchro, will it stop appearing? Is it like repetitive numbers – 11:11, for instance – that once you’ve acknowledged it, dived into it, gotten the message, it stops happening? Or is it like my Lotto tickets, where week after week, I get one number?

Aw, c’mon, universe. Deliver all the winning numbers, please!