Doesn’t it become harder to have strong friendships as one grows older?
When I was in college, the world seemed to be rolled out before me like a red carpet, only for me. And why of course I had some potential. Why of course I had a thousand ideas about the way the world worked. I had a hundred questions about it. I had several opinions, many theories, and I was only recently nurturing the skill of eloquence. I was only recently honing and moulding and shaping English to better reflect my thoughts and no longer relent to the other way around. I was hungering for the world and what it had to offer.
Making friends was only a step behind in all of this, it was to catch up soon enough, and it did in its limited, quintessential way. I don’t mean to say that the magic of college turned me, an incorrigibly reserved child, into a social butterfly of sorts – it never did, and I never was one. I only mean that it was far too pleasanter an exercise to approach someone in college and talk the little I could talk. Well. At the very least, I knew what I wanted to talk about. I had a thousand things in my mind, truckloads of ideas careening in my head all the time all day all night. And then, well, “people” at the time meant merely other students like me, so that’s there.
Anyway, I find it a little awkward to strike conversations now. I find I don’t have much to say. And how can that be? It’s soon going to be a decade since graduating from college, surely there’s that many more years of ideas and opinions in my head! And yet.
But maybe I’m looking at it wrongly. Maybe, as you properly ease into adulthood you are more suited to establish stray moments of deep connection with people, rather than elaborate friendships. I think, in the world there is more potential for moments of true connection between two humans than there is in friendships. Friendships are beautiful – I guess, because, I haven’t really made a proper friend since I left college. And maybe that’s alright. If I focus on moments of connection rather than making friends or not, I would have done far better in my pursuit of bouncing ideas, revelling in them and coming up with words for them, all of which gives me joy.
And these moments can be sought for and found in a variety of places, not limited to college.
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Something Truly Interesting
(In this section, I hope to share one thing that really made me sit up and take note. It could be anything from interesting interviews to short stories to artwork to TV shows and podcast episodes. I hope you find it interesting too!)
This stunning collection of photographs of trees showcasing crown shyness.
“Crown shyness is a naturally occurring phenomenon in some tree species where the upper most branches in a forest canopy avoid touching one another. The visual effect is striking as it creates clearly defined borders akin to cracks or rivers in the sky when viewed from below.”
Picturesque Disrepair 