Weekly Observations: Week 52 💡
On owning up. I came to the realization this week that I unconsciously treat friends sometimes the same way folks think of their Tinder matches: you swipe, you match, you have a little conversation and check each other out, but without an instant spark or sense of chemistry, you move on to the next person, mind already thinking about all the other fish in the sea that you’ve still yet to explore.
I like to think that I’m not quite that extreme, but I will say that the broad sentiment’s fairly accurate. It reminds me of a brief aside Ray Dalio made in Principles— your greatest strengths are generally in turn your greatest weaknesses. For the last few years, I’ve gotten really comfortable with the types of situations that most find extremely unnerving: checking out new communities and new circles of friends (often times without the buffer of any familiar faces or moral support) and spending time with complete strangers. In joining in on these various group activities and gatherings, I’m exposed to many new people, with new opportunities to connect with folks and make new friends. And I do.
That sense of possibility, that sense of abundance — while it’s generally a positive thing that I’ve been grateful for, it’s also come with its own set of drawbacks. Knowing there’re always more people to meet, to befriend down the road has unconsciously influenced me to write off friends too easily: Friend A’s not introspective enough; Friend B’s too basic; Friend C doesn’t add enough value to my life; Friend D likes to repeat themselves all the time. Over time, I’ve unwittingly created a revolving door of friends, folks circulating in and out of my life with alarming regularity.
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I remember lamenting about my constant churn in friendships once with a work colleague of mine — at the time, he wisely observed that in this, there were two possible options. It could be the case that somehow all of these previous friends of mine had issues (a thought I seriously pondered at the time). Alternatively, he pointed out that there was a common factor in all these relationships: me. I couldn’t see it at the time, but I realize now that I wasn’t faultless for the predicament that I found myself in.
This entire line of thinking originally began on a weekday morning on my walk to the shuttle, during which my thoughts turned once again to the state of my inner circle and why I felt so bereft of friendship and intimacy at times. If you asked me to list the X number of people that I consider myself to be closest to, 1) I don’t know who I’d list exactly, and 2) I’m not even sure how close they’d actually be to me. Intimacy comes in different flavors: there’s emotional intimacy, the type of dynamic in which I feel completely comfortable confessing my thoughts, insecurities, feelings (and vice versa); physical intimacy speaks to the physical comfort and familiarity that you share with someone (either romantic or platonic); and then there’s everyday intimacy, the closeness that comes from knowing the minutiae of someone’s day, the collection of small (and occasionally large) rages, frustrations, joys, observations that pile up over the course of daily life.
I often associate best friendship to be a mix of emotional and everyday intimacy, and by that definition, I’m not sure if I have anyone that really fits that description. Once again, I’ve come to realize that this is a situation of my own making. I don’t broadcast the small intimate details of my daily life: I don’t use social media heavily, don’t use Stories, and have also come to minimize the amount of personal messaging I do throughout the day at work. I don’t put myself out there for bite-sized consumption on the whole, don’t think and talk about life in the small minute moments. My style tends to favor taking in inputs, ruminating and processing the raw data, and slowly identifying patterns, moods from the noise. It’s processing life on the order of days and weeks, as opposed to minutes and hours. While I don’t have everyday intimacy, I am fortunate to have emotional intimacy in spades. Whether you realize it or not, your behavior has downstream effects and optimizes for different outcomes.
Yet again, I find myself comparing my life and what I have (and conversely don’t have) to the standards and expectations that I’ve unconsciously internalized from outside influences over time. As I’ve descended down this rabbit hole of self discovery this year, it’s been crazy to realize the extent to which I’ve come to internalize and become unconsciously incepted to want, desire, and aspire to certain achievements.
At this juncture, there’s an open question of how to act now that my eyes have been opened. I can decide that I’m fine with things the way they are (the lack of everyday intimacy), that my subconscious behaviors aren’t helping me and adjust from there (my Tinder friend mindset), or explore both paths. Evolve or die, right?
