As I stumble my way through life, collect experience, experience hardship, overcome obstacles, I find the pool of people I would truly call “friends” becomes smaller and smaller.
I still have plenty of acquaintances, peers, colleagues, etc.
But the people we truly connect with is usually based on some shared commonality:
- The school you went to;
- A sports team
- Shared ethics or religion
- Friends in common
- A work project
- An interest or hobby
The deeper and more personal the shared commonality, and the degree to which we are open about it, tends to influence the depth of our relationship.
Over time, friends fall away. This is only natural;
After all, you no longer go to the same school, and your interests quickly diverge. Maybe you lose a few more when you move town, and even close friends can fall away each time you go through major changes like starting a business, having a child, moving. The overlap in your daily experience becomes smaller and smaller. And of course, life’s responsibilities grow and grow and relationships are often left till last and neglected.
For some it’s easy to just go out and find new friends to replace your old school friends;
After all, there’s plenty more people with common interests.
But so many folk go to school, or perhaps college or maybe even university, then they graduate and say to themselves “Now my education is done. Now I find a job”.
And most do. They find a job or a career and meet people in that line of work, or with similar hobbies….
But what happens if you don’t?
It’s presumed that education ends in your early twenties, when you are a barely formed person with almost no life experience. I was probably an insufferable knob in my twenties. I’d hate to think I was still that naïve young man. Education is growth. Changing your thinking changes your behaviour. So if you stop learning, you stop changing and you stop growing.
If you commit yourself to self growth and growing a little bit everyday then it also holds true that in a short time, perhaps as little as a few years, you may be a very different person.
Since few people can commit themselves to constant growth (it’s fucking exhausting, and the distractions grow more plentiful, and more addictive every day) it also stands to reason that the pool of people you can actually connect with becomes smaller and smaller.
If you work in a specialist field, then it’s even smaller still:
There’s a baseline of knowledge required just to discuss things like marketing, funnels, offers, value staircases. This can narrow the pool of people who can participate in any meaningful discussion about a work topic, unless they also work in that field.
Ie. Talking to Doctors about Doctoring is incomprehensible, unless you’re also Doctor:
“OMG today I had x2 Post-op day 2’s; both with creatinine’s bumped, lactate’s normalized, but still tachy with a soft pressure, so I’m thinking prerenal AKI versus early sepsis.”
“oh man, I would deffo’s trend the CBC, repeat cultures if he spikes, hold the ACE, give a cautious bolus, and keep him NPO, let the surgeons deal with that mess, LOL ROFLCOPTERS”
Running a business has it’s own raft of challenges that only business owners will understand. Similarly, self-improvement, and lifestyle design has it’s own lexicon, reading list, baseline of understanding required to talk about it deeply.
So suddenly the pool of people you can make friends with has shrunk:
“everyone in my school”
↓
“everyone in my school who went on to study architecture”
↓
“everyone why left architecture to start their own business”
↓
“everyone who started their own business and have kids”
↓
“everyone who started their own business and have kids and is obsessed with lifestyle design”
It’s easy to be limited to banal small-talk with most people you meet;
Many people aren’t ready for an expanded perspective, they haven’t read the books you’ve read, they have no experience of the challenges you’ve faced, have no interest in starting their own business.
Self growth is lonely
– Dan Koe, The Art of Focus
But don’t worry about this:
I’ve come to believe it comes down to the depth of conversation and a harmony in the level of thinking. I realise this may sound pretentious and elitist;
“I’ve read a few books, now I am a thinker”
So when someone does something self-centred, or narrow minded,
or gives in to their emotions instead of logic…
when I want to shake them and say
“Can’t you see yourself? are you a child?!”
instead, I try to remind myself I behave like that at times too.
I try to remind myself everyone is doing the best they can with the level of awareness they have, and the knowledge and tools at their disposal.
But people behave based on their own experiences, and do what they can with the knowledge they have.
This isn’t some race to a goal that you have determined for yourself.
If people aren’t ready or interested in pursuing self-growth it’s not your job to educate them or push them to it; That would be a quick route to being a pretentious twat.
On a fundamental level, we all have the same problems with different contexts or flavours.
It’s entirely possible to deeply connect with someone over these shared, universal, challenges of life. But still, it’s easy to become estranged as your pool of people with similar life experiences shrinks.
Age, income, religion, etc doesn’t seem to matter much as a gauge for connection:
Sometimes spending mere minutes with some people my own age seems like an eternity, covering banal topics, the latest Netflix shows and gossip yet I can spend hours with our retired neighbours in engaged conversation that flies by in minutes
When you can find someone on the same level of thinking,
who have experienced the same challenges,
or hold the same values,
you connect deeply.
It may seem like friends are melting away, your social circle is shrinking…
But think quality over quantity.
What’s left is the enriched version of your community.
