Preface: I think I'll start beginning these posts with: “Despite being of the most powerful human beings on the planet...” Anything with those words tacked onto the front immediately lends credibility to whatever follows. It adds credibility, but also so much more. It's perfectly sets up any scenario. Seriously. If what I say makes sense, or is somehow profound or life-changing, which I hope is not the case, you'll simply think to yourself, or knowingly whisper (assuming that, upon reading such a momentous turn of the English language, you are rendered all but speechless) to a neighbor well, he is one of the most powerful human beings on the planet. What'd you expect? On the other hand, if what I write does not change your life, the first sentence will act as a disclaimer – informing the world that I am in fact fallible. A touch of humanity seeping out from an otherwise Adonis/Gaston/Einsten-esque figure of world popular culture. It is infinitely more likely that you will read this post with only mild interest, as a brief, unremarkable interlude to the work day. That works for me, too.
Despite being one of the most powerful human beings on the planet, I am not immune to the passage of time. Like many around the world, I took in the new year at precisely 12 AM on 1 January 2010. Also, like many of my fellow wanderers, I took the brash license of a new day, a new year, and a new decade (unless you're one of those formalist, slightly arrogant buzzkills who don't believe that a year ending with a zero begins a new decade – really, it's so much easier the other way) to make a new year's resolution.
The resolution: Make new friends.
With the very important corollary: While (or, “whilst”, if we're going to be proper about it) keeping the ones I have.
One bad thing about being a self-professed misanthrope is that sometimes you actually enjoy the company of other humans. I'd go out on a limb and say that this is true most of the time for me. The problem is that it can become a damning self-fulfilling prophesy if I don't work at it.
Returning to my Minnesota late this summer after what I will inaccurately call my Wilderness Years (only because I like that phrase), I was excited to reacquaint with old friends. I've managed to keep in touch with many of them during college and after, but this, I thought, would be different. All of us would be back in the same city, taking part in the same activities we did growing up. It would be like a greatest hits compilation of the past decade. A fitting bookend to a time when these memories weren't memories, but just another Friday night. Well... I may have made a slight miscalculation.
As it turns out, my friends aren't just recreations of hazy, jumbled memories of the past, made possible by the firing of nostalgic synapses. They're real people! Unlike the bad cliché (or Springsteen's “Glory Days”), I did not return home to find my friends eking out a dead-end existence, still reliving the past, the so-called heyday of high school. And thank god they didn't. They aren't stunted teenagers -- some have grownup jobs, some are in grad school, all fast on their way to becoming super lawyers, dentists, doctors, advertising maestros, etc., etc.
This is why I need new friends (not forgetting the all-important corollary). It was fine being “the high school friend” when I visited from college. My base consisted of the people I grew up with but the world expands throughout each phase of life. As it expands, unfortunately, the bond that initially connects becomes colored, diminished by time. It takes work to maintain these bonds and there's a sort of triage aspect of who you want to keep (and who will keep you) in your circle. And reminiscing only gets you so far. Making new memories with old friends is better than remembering old memories.
When we're young, our friends share a common bond of school. We categorize friends, separating the grade school friends from the high school, and so on. While invariably some of these friends also hold common interests, the most binding one is school. As I grow older, I'm realizing that this cannot go on forever! There is just so much school a person can go through, and only a finite number of friends one can collect while doing so. It's time to start finding more friends who like the things I do. Tree-huggers. Local music scenesters. Crate-digging vinyl fiends. Whatever. Where do I find these people? Definitely not sitting at home.
I must get out and wander.
1 comment:
Pretty much everyone I've talked to in the past year has said this EXACT post, albeit in varying levels of misery and hope.
Making friends outside of sanctioned activities is hard, especially for our generation, but I feel like we ALL want to do it. I say it's time we sack up.
And um... keep the old friends too, just like the Girl Scouts rhyme. Hope you're well- miss chatting with you! Talk SOON.
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