Friend #20 - Smiley
An author, keynote speaker & workplace belonging expert
Smiley, the name suits you. 52 Friends is on Instagram.
Smiley is impressive. In my internet digging on friendship, I found his book titled Friendship in the Age of Loneliness. Then I discovered his TEDx talk which has nearly two million views called Refusing to Settle: The Quarter-Life Crisis. Most of his work focuses on workplace belonging.
I sent Smiley an email a few weeks ago with the subject line, “Let’s be friends?” Now we are.
“I love the idea,” he says when we spoke over Zoom. “Are you thinking of turning it into a book?”
“I want to. I’m working on a few ideas now,” I reply. “Maybe something Tuesdays with Morrie style.”
I assumed that because Smiley has been working on encouraging connection for the last decade that he wouldn’t be lonely. The beginning of his book highlights the contrary. It reads, “Not long ago, I went through a period of loneliness and sadness. This might come as a surprise to some, since my nickname is Smiley, and I have 4,867 Facebook friends.”
Smiley explains that he’s had his nickname since high school, and as a social extrovert he realized that if he was struggling with loneliness then other people must be as well.
“If you dig into the research. It’s an epidemic,” he says. “Two thirds of Americans are lonely. ‘This needs to be a book,’ I thought.”
He goes on to say that when he pitched his book there were fewer reads on friendship but post pandemic a few have come out like Big Friendship and Platonic.
Smiley says it’s hard to pick a best friend but that if he had to pick one person, it would be his college friend Dre. “We became adults together but I like to say that I have several best friends from different parts of my life,” he says.
Over the years, Smiley has seen his friendship with Dre change. As college students whose families were both from the Boston area, a great part of their friendship was formed during school breaks. After college the two moved into an apartment in Brooklyn together with another friend. “That was probably the peak of our friendship,” says Smiley. “Then I left New York and lived in various places. Dre ended up back in Boston and I’m in San Francisco. He has a kid who is my godson. It’s one of the hardest things about adulthood. People that you used to see everyday and talk to everyday, you may only talk to every couple of months which is sad.”
“In your book you talk about tier one friends which fall after family. How do you decide who’s in that second layer?” I ask Smiley.
“It’s hard to have one definition. People can move in between tiers depending on the season or the point in life. Sometimes someone is an immediate tier one friend just because you spend a weekend together. And you feel like you’re so connected to them. But you kind of know who the first person that you would call is or who you call when you’re sick or who you’re the most excited to see. Those are tier one friends,” he says.
We then talk about how important communication is in a friendship and I ask Smiley if there are some people who we may judge as being unfriendly when they simply don’t have space in their lives for us. He says, “If someone is always saying I don’t want to hang out with you. That may be a sign that they don’t want to be friends but if they answer by saying ‘Hey I really can’t make it but let’s plan something for next week’ that’s different than always hunting.”
Smiley has a chapter in his book titled, “Don’t Ask Just Help.” It’s dedicated to encouraging people to be proactive when they know their friend may be going through a tough time. “Send a text that says, ‘Can I take you out for a glass of wine?’ or ‘Hey how about a walk on Saturday?’ or ‘I’m thinking of you and sending my love.’ Oftentimes we’re waiting for people to make the first move.”
Another chapter in his book is titled, “Be Vulnerable Around Other Men.” An issue that Smiley describes as a big one. “There are very few books about friendship written by men and there are very few books designed for men. I think that men in their teens and 20s don’t have a lot of examples of what it means to be vulnerable and to be a man in touch with their emotions. That’s not their fault. It’s society. One of my new projects is focused on this area.”
Smiley credits his parents who have been married for over 40 years as being good examples of friendship.
As an introvert, I ask Smiley if he thinks it takes a certain personality type to be friendly. He says, “Introverts are incredible friends. They’re great communicators and they really think about their words. You have to have the desire and intention to be open and connect. You don’t need to be optimistic and smiley but you need to be curious.”
Smiley’s greatest tip for friendship is to start small. Send one text message. Go to one coffee shop. Go to one event. That’s the most important thing.
“We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.”
―Charlie Chaplin
Internet Browsing
Other books by Smiley