prologue Only weeks before he died, the great English novelist E. M. Forster received a visit from the much younger Christopher Isherwood—a friend and also a distinguished novelist and essayist. For Isherwood it was a kind of final pilgrimage to the master.
Forster was ninety-one years old. As Isherwood later said, he was shocked to see his mentor looking so stooped and feeble. Bent over severely from the waist, wearing a classic tweed cap, and leaning heavily on a walking stick, Forster was indistinguishable in appearance, suggested Isherwood, from any other old man one might see doddering stiffly down the street—the very image, perhaps, of W. B. Yeats’s “aged man.” (Yeats had written, famously, “an aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick.”)
Forster was, of course, no paltry thing. He was a legend. He was then, and had been for fifty years, a revered master at King’s College, Cambridge. He was the acknowledged master of plot (about which he’d written extensively), and his final two novels, Howards End and A Passage to India, were landmarks in British literature. Isherwood and other writers of the younger generation saw Forster as a kind of Zen-like figure. Says Wendy Moffat in her superb biography of Forster, he “was the only writer of the previous generation [whom Isherwood and his younger peers] admired without reservation.”
“A paltry thing” perhaps in certain ways, yes. And yet. Just two weeks before his death, what a fire burned in him still. Isherwood noticed Forster’s fierce inner glow during that final visit and recognized it for what it was: the happiness of a life well-lived.
What was this life force in Forster? What was this gleam of fulfillment? And how did he acquire it?
In his youth, Edward Morgan Forster—usually just called Morgan by his friends—had been a notoriously shy and frequently bullied young mama’s boy. He had been isolated from other boys and was essentially friendless but for his adoring mother. He was a funny-looking kid: skinny, with almost no chin, clumsy at sports, obviously cerebral.
Emotional and relational isolation was the great wound of Forster’s early life. And yet, at his death at ninety-one he was surrounded with a deep network of friends, a web of ardent and lively human connections that any of us would admire at any age, but especially in a nonagenarian.
How do we explain the transformation?
It’s a fantastic story. And it hinges on one pivotal moment in Forster’s young life.
In mid-July of 1904, the shy and lonely Forster, then twenty-five years old, set out for a solitary day of walking in the countryside east of Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England. It was rugged, beautiful terrain, and Forster was in a kind of reverie as he ambled along the lane leading away from the town. Three miles east of Salisbury he happened upon an ancient fort—a now almost completely overgrown relic from the Iron Age, known locally as “the Rings.” The fort consisted of a number of twelve-foot-high concentric embankments, or “rings,” surrounding an impressive rise at the center. Just at the heart of this ancient fort, Forster happened upon a young “shepherd boy” (really not so much a “boy” as a young man) relaxing under the shade of the tree, having a smoke on a pipe.
Forster and the shepherd boy talked amiably for twenty minutes or so—talked, as Forster wrote later, “about nothing, still one of my favourite subjects.”
But something monumental appears to have happened in that conversation, something that the casual observer would likely not even have noticed. Forster connected, somehow, with this young man. The shepherd was straightforward, generous of spirit, warm, engaging—grounded, as we might say, in the land and in the place. Forster found the lad to have some kind of intrinsic nobility. As a gesture of friendship, the young man offered Forster a “draw” on his pipe. Forster, moved by the gesture, felt what he recognized as a mysterious kinship with the shepherd; he felt the connection intensely.
What had happened? Forster pondered it for days. The brief conversation with the shepherd was for Forster a moment of unadulterated, unfeigned human warmth and connection—connection of the kind for which he longed; indeed, of the kind he had missed so deeply in his young life that he didn’t even know it was possible.
Integrating Forster’s own words from his journal, Wendy Moffat describes how the experience affected the young writer: “No spark of human warmth has found more willing kindling,” she wrote. “Morgan ‘caught fire up on the Rings.’ In that ‘junction of mind and heart where the creative impulse sparks,’ the boy had touched him . . . The boy’s spontaneous kindness convinced him ‘that the English can be the greatest men in the world.’”
Here, in the shepherd boy, was, perhaps, the brother Forster had longed for—or the friend he hadn’t even dared hope for.
After his chat with the shepherd, Morgan walked on, transformed. He wrote about it in depth that evening. He went back to the area of the fort for several consecutive days, trying to find the lad again. He never did.
But this moment awakened him. He realized that human connection was what most fascinated him. And in that moment, Morgan—the scholar, the writer, the intellectual—found his calling. His vocation. This is what he would write about. This is what he would study: the possibility of authentic, deep, human connection. Indeed, shortly thereafter, by way of putting his intention into action, Forster used the shepherd boy as the model for a central character in his great novel The Longest Journey.
During that auspicious summer, Forster decided to dedicate his entire life’s work to the study and contemplation of friendship and human connection—the two things for which he most longed. Not only to write about human connection, mind you, but to experiment with it in every way: personal, sexual, emotional, professional.
Says Moffat: “Like Cezanne relentlessly painting and repainting the silhouette of Mont Sainte-Victoire, or Jane Austen sketching her moral vision on ‘the little bit of ivory’ of provincial domestic life, Morgan discovered the richness and complexity of his entire ouevre, his whole aesthetic enterprise in a single subject: the search of each person for an honest connection with another human being.”
Along the way, struggling to find satisfying human warmth, Forster turned friendship and connection into a high art. He studied precise moments of connection, and their power. Slowly, he learned how to connect. And over time, he turned human connection into an art form. He made a practice of being fully present for his friends. He practiced conscious connection. Writes his biographer: “To speak with him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.”
For the epigraph of Howards End—Forster’s great masterpiece—the distinguished novelist had written simply this: “Only connect.”
Only connect! It is the epigraph, too, of E. M. Forster’s entire life. And is written on the large stone monument to his life in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, near his boyhood home.
Forster’s systematically developed capacity for intense connection often surprised even his friends. Indeed, surprise was one of the hallmarks of his great, and belatedly developed, emotional intelligence. “In life and in writing,” says Moffat, “Morgan preferred to plumb the depths and to leave himself open to surprise. Even the most ordinary conversation could ‘tip a sentence into an unexpected direction and deliver a jolt.’”
For his final visit with Christopher Isherwood, Forster had prepared just such a surprise. He handed Isherwood a manuscript—a manuscript upon which Forster had secretly been working for almost forty years. It was the text of his final masterpiece, the great novel Maurice, which would be published after his death. Forster had quietly written one of the most stirring novels ever published of deep connection between two men.
Until just before his death, Morgan was still writing. Still reflecting. Still living.
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And what about you?
If you dared to write the history of your own life thus far, what would be your story of connection? Would it be short? Long? Satisfying? Lacking? Colored by the same intense longing experienced by Forster? Have you, like Forster, had to learn the art of connection intentionally, ploddingly, even painfully? Or have you, perhaps, turned away from it until now as too frightening, too risky?
Inspired in part by Forster’s struggle—and after having read virtually all of his work—I’ve examined my own life through this lens of human connection. It’s been a revelatory lens, and one that I recommend to pretty much everyone. Through the process of my own self-investigation, I’ve found a format through which to organize such an examination—one that I think might be useful to others. So, I hope you’ll accompany me on a pilgrimage through this fascinating territory.
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To begin with, here’s a challenge for you: Could you easily name the dozen people with whom you have most deeply connected in this lifetime?
Most likely you could.
If asked, I think that most of us could quickly come up with a fairly accurate list of the ten or twelve or fifteen people who have who have touched us most deeply, and whom we have touched in return—those human beings who have, indeed, helped to shape us into who we are today.
For most of us, these connections are still vividly present in powerful images and in body memories. The very thought of these connections inspires flights of memory, of fantasy, of nostalgia, and perhaps of grief. And, with the perspective of time, I have found that an understanding of the impact of these connections only grows stronger.
I myself made such a list a couple of years ago—the selfsame list I’m challenging you to make. As it turns out, it’s a list I treasure. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk, and it turns up every now and then when I’m rummaging through that drawer. I sometimes pull it out to ponder for a moment. It always provides a spark of recognition, and at least a few long thoughts.
That list of fourteen human beings (there were fourteen on my own particular list) grabs my gut. Each name summons memories, energy, sometimes sadness. But the combination of all those names together on one list? Wow. Together they make up some kind of potent brew that defines me, describes me, and sums me up better than anything else I can imagine. It is not an exaggeration to say it: those people are my life.
Back to you.
Will you actually take a stab at writing your own list?
Careful, though. Trust your gut on this one. A common trap here is to think about who should be on the list. But no. Avoid that trap at all costs, or this experiment will not do you any good at all. For just a moment notice who really is on that list—without any intervention by the part of your mind that likes to manage these things. Go beneath the impulse to censor.
Oh, and by the way, there are a couple of people on my own list that I have never even met. Indeed, one of them has been dead for two hundred years. Yeah: Ludwig van Beethoven. How could I possibly leave him off the list? Beethoven changed my life. (My piano teacher herself noticed it one night: “You seem to have some kind of powerful connection with him, with Beethoven. Are you aware of that?” Of course I was. But I was moved that she noticed.)
Have you had a Beethoven in your life? My twin sister, Sandy, put Saint John of the Cross on her list. My friend Dan put down an obscure seventeenth-century Jesuit priest. My friend Brian included Andrew Carnegie.
If you really trust your instincts as you make your list, I’ll bet you’ll be surprised at who ends up on the page. Some of them you may not even actually like that much. Maybe there is one individual whom you knew for only one night. But there he or she is. Knowing that person has touched you in ways you can barely describe or explain.
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Most of us will have many friends throughout our lifetimes—friends of all shapes, sizes, and callings. Many of these are wonderful, meaningful friendships. Some are difficult. But some magic few of these are connections that have gone right to our soul. Some magic few of this entire flock have been doing the heavy lifting. Some magic five or ten or twelve have become remarkably powerful keys to determining who we have become and who we will become. These few move the inner tectonic plates of our being, our personalities, our souls. These are the people I call Soul Friends.
As it turns out, Soul Friendships are the crucible in which we are evoked, created, affirmed, sustained, and transformed. Our relationships with our Soul Friends are the containers, the sparks, and the fuel required for psychological and spiritual development. These special kinds of relationships can be brief and powerful, or long and sustained; they can exist across long distances and over vast spans of time; they can be highly charged connections within the family—parents, grandparents, siblings—or they can be friendships or relationships at school or at work. Occasionally, as with Forster’s shepherd boy, they can be powerful connections with complete strangers. In fact, as you can see, some of our Soul Friends are not ordinary “friends” by most conventional understandings of the word.
Contemporary neuroscience has now given us a remarkably precise understanding of the neural mechanisms of development elicited in these kinds of relationships. We now know that the brain and nervous system are “experience dependent” and much more plastic than we had previously thought. Just over the past decade, we have begun to understand how interpersonal experience shapes the growth of the neural networks in the brain. We know that “tuning in” to another mind, another self, another brain, is absolutely essential to the development of the self. The self is, in fact, almost entirely a social and interpersonal creation.
So, there it is: Just what Forster found. Almost all significant human development and transformation happens in the context of interpersonal connection. From the beginning of life to the end, what we might call “the real stuff” happens in the context of the relational field in which we’re submerged. Important relationships are at the core of growth, change, health, and optimal states. And yet, strangely, these relational containers are often minimized or ignored altogether in our thinking about the mechanisms of change. In our spiritual journeys, for example, we focus primarily on theology, philosophy, the practice of prayer or meditation or yoga, the performing of good works, the development of faith in a higher power, or consciousness itself. But notice: in the background always lie these relationships, these Soul Friendships.
I have become fascinated by the powerful role these relationships play in our personal development, and in our capacity for change. And so I have investigated them in some depth. Where do we look for a true understanding of these Soul Friends? What thinkers have drilled down into this area with particular insight?
Interestingly enough, this topic is just beginning to emerge in the world of contemporary spiritual practice. We are just now beginning to hear the conversation everywhere. In this book, I will piece together everything I’ve learned along the way about the precise mechanisms of transformation within relationships. My own answers will arise from my twenty-five years of observation; from my training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy; from a number of very important thinkers, particularly Heinz Kohut, D. W. Winnicott, Ronald Fairbairn, and, of course, Sigmund Freud; and from a whole new generation of scientists who are studying the psychology and neurobiology of relationships, including, especially, Dan Siegel, John Bowlby, and Barbara Fredrickson.
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You might be surprised, as I was, to find that the people on your list of Soul Friends will almost certainly fall into a pattern. Many of them will fall into a number of predictable, but nonetheless exciting, categories—categories that have technical names, or roles, in the psychological literature.
The people on your list have probably played one or more of the following essential roles in your psychological and spiritual development:
It is the central premise of this book that these are six forms of human connection that we must have in order to grow, to thrive, to develop, and to live fully. Much of our spiritual, psychological, and even physical growth takes place in the context of, and as a result of, these special relationships. And I believe that through recognizing and understanding the nature of these connections, we can more skillfully shape who we become.
The six mechanisms of transformation, then, as I have described them, are:
Western psychology—and Western literature—has been particularly adept at mapping these special kinds of human connections. Indeed, much of our great literature is about little else than the presence—or absence—of these relationships. And yet, the mapping done by great Western psychologists, thinkers, and artists, robust as it is, has never really been systematically gathered into a user-friendly guidebook to the territory, or indeed, any kind of systematic map whatsoever.
This book represents my attempt to provide some preliminary exploration of this territory—through the integration of the vast amount that we know about these special kinds of connections through psychology, neuroscience, religion, and great art and literature.
As you may have already perceived, this book is not primarily a theoretical treatise, but a practical one. The aim is to provide a close description of these special human connections—an experience-near accounting, if you will—so that the reader can identify their presence or absence in his own life, and so that he can then learn to live more skillfully, and more consciously.
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By the end of his life, as I’ve said, E. M. Forster had created what Dr. Heinz Kohut would call “a rich surround of relationship”—a network within which he thrived, created, connected, and acted. This web of friendship held him up. It buoyed him, challenged him, and mirrored him back to himself. By the end of his life, Forster realized, too, that it had saved him.
Winston Churchill famously said, “We build our buildings and after-wards they shape us.” Likewise, we build our relationships, and then they shape us. I hope that the outline I’m creating in this book will help some of us to name and claim the precise kinds of relationships that nurture our development, our idiosyncratic genius—and our souls.
Once we understand the true role of Soul Friendships and precisely how they work—how they function to support self-development and self-realization—we are in a position to consciously use them for our growth. We can then begin to systematically create for ourselves a “surround” of highly effective relationships that will continue to evoke, affirm, and sustain our most mature selves—just as Forster did.
In the following pages, you’ll meet six of my own most important Soul Friends. I introduce them to you as a way to make real the six mechanisms of friendship I’ve described above—to give heart and flesh to the theory that I’ll be articulating, and to evoke, perhaps, your own memories of deep connection. In every instance, the characters you meet are real: my grandmother, the feisty farm girl Armeda VanDemark Crothers; my best friend in college, the complex and sometimes tormented Seth; my nemesis and noble adversary as a young man, the magisterial Helen Harrington Compton; one of my best friends as a young adult, and my most perceptive mirror—the Anglican clergyman John Ritchie Purnell; my muse, or mystic friend, the writer Annie Dillard; and one of my current best friends, Susan Griffiths. In some cases, names, dates, places, and situations have been changed to protect the innocent. But the heart of each of the stories is real.
You’ll notice, too, that in each section I’ve included one rather in-depth examination of a famous friendship. In almost every case, at least one of these pairs of friends has become an important world figure, and the role of the other, often less well-known friend, has become largely forgotten or minimized. To my mind, these epic stories of friendship communicate—perhaps more powerfully than anything else—the true power of Soul Friendships.
One final introductory note: In the six sections that follow, I am attempting to communicate what I call “exact moments of human transmission.” In other words, what, precisely, is it that passes between friends in the most transforming moments of friendship? What is the precise experience of containment, of twinship, of adversity, and so forth? Please understand: I tell you these stories—both my own and others’—to stimulate you, or even to inspire you, to think about the special relationships in your own life, and your own “exact moments of transmission.”
And so, let’s dive in!