Growing Up

When most people are young and in school we promise each other that we will be great friends forever. Then "life" happens and somehow years later we find that we no longer associate with any of the same people we used to know. What happens to cause this?  To really understand that, you need to understand what it is that drew you together in the first place.

You are naturally drawn toward people that have the same interests as you. You like a lot of the same foods, so you tend to eat together. You like the same styles of music so you jam together with your tunes, either in a band on your stereo or both. You play the same games, watch the same movies and read many of the same books.

The more things you do together, the more you have in common. And the more you have in common, the more you want to do together. You play, live, love, learn and grow together. Over time your experiences together form what seems to be an unbreakable bond.  After awhile, you really can not imagine living without one another.It is usually what happens though.

A couple of people in your group may go off to college in different states. One person may have to go out of town to take care of family. Another may spend 16 hours a day trying to keep a family business running. Soon there is just one or two of you left, reminiscing about what you all used to do together in the old days.

All of the things that you do together and all of the people that do them together become your social circle. I think of each collection of activities and time spent together as the core of a sphere and each person as rotating around that sphere. There are an infinite number of potential spheres as there is an infinite number of potential groupings of people and activities. And the way I see it, when one or more people no longer spend the time in that group doing those activities together, they naturally spin off from that sphere and into another one.

It is technically possible to hold a group together that is physically no longer able to spend as much time together. You can call, write, text,email, video chat, share every little thing you do on Facebook and Twitter and make frequent visits  to one another. But it will never be the same as when you all used to hang out together because there are so many other things going on in each individual life that you do not have the time to share with everybody all the time. Most people say that they will do whatever it takes to keep the relationship going but when it comes right down to doing it, they do not. And that is okay. Yes, it is possible, but generally not worth the time or effort and usually just ends up adding enormous amounts of stress and strain on these relationships.

The time and effort that gets spent trying to keep a person locked into an old social circle prevents you from enjoying the people new and old that are in your social circle and prevents that person from fully enjoying the new sphere that they have spun off into. Do everything you can to spend as much time as possible enjoying life with the people in your sphere. But when circumstances natural or otherwise cause someone to no longer fit in your group, wish them well and let them go. It is nobody's fault. There is nothing wrong with you or them. Sometimes these things just happen. It may seem sad or even unfair at the time, but sometimes room needs to be made for new growth. Not everyone grows at the same time, same rate or even in the same direction, even if we have exactly the same experiences.

And that is why people very seldom remain lifelong friends with their school buddies.

Have a great...

Would it creep you out if we were having some kind of social interaction and at the end of it, just before parting, you said to me "have a great day" and I replied with "have a great forever" ? Would your mind automatically assume that I was suggesting you were going to be dead soon? I mean even to my ears it sounds a little off. My meaning though is not nefarious in any way. Perhaps it is more something to just jolt people out of their everyday autopilot system.

Take a minute or two and think about it. People tend to respond to social niceties like robots. There are commonly used phrases that we are programmed to reply to with the appropriate ending to the equation that the other person began by speaking.  When greeted we reply back often by reflex, without thinking about what we are doing.  We are told that this is normal and what we should do.

They say hi, we say hi. They do something we say thank you, they say you're welcome. They say have a nice day, we say have a nice day.

While I agree that we should return kindness with kindness and a polite greeting in kind as well, I think the reflex should be cancelled. One should never reply without a bit of thought about what the person said to you and then some reflection on how we feel about what they said. Then, after that we can reply with whatever is true for us. It will only take a couple of extra seconds. And then the interaction will actually mean something to both parties, instead of  being some archaic formulaic ritual that we observe. Slow down, take the extra few seconds. It will make life richer for all involved.

Now having said that, when I think about the phrase have a nice day, at first, it seems like polite and generous well wishing on the part of the giver.  But then my naturally overactive mind goes, but what about tonight, or tomorrow, or the week after next or next year. Does the person's benevolence towards my well being die out in just a small handful of hours? Surely if you were to have a private conversation with whoever it was that wished you a nice day they would say they never really thought about it.

It is something though, that I think we should think about. Language is very important. It is an essential part of communication and since we all live in our own little worlds inside our minds, we need to be very clear what it is that we transmit from world to world when we have such opportunities to communicate. If you really do wish positive things upon another person and want their lives to be the very best they can possibly be, why stop at today? Why not wish them a happy forever?

Up until now this has just been a thought swirling around in my head. From this point forward I am going to make a point of changing my speech patterns to include my true desire for other human beings and that is for them to be happy all the time, not just today. And if you agree with my way of thinking, then I encourage you to do the same.

Have a great forever. And talk to you again soon.