Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #025
Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #025 – “The Adults Are Talking”
It’s such an interesting world we live in, so filled with connections and disconnections of all kinds.
Look…I’d be the last guy to say that I’m totally functional in social settings. I’m pretty awkward in many circumstances I’m sure, but c’mon…for the past fourteen years I’ve been off the grid, here on these pages of ours, and usually out of view of the world unless I’ve been summoned for some reason. I don’t go out to do a ton of stuff. I see more concerts than most people tend to, but that’s my happy place. That’s the one space where I can finally forget about all my own strange quirks & simply enjoy my time. Other than that, I’m not interested in going to the mall, I’m not interested in taking four hours to shop for the best deal on groceries, I’m not the guy to go and get the oil changed…I kinda just keep to myself. My wife is a very patient and understanding lady, believe me. If it wasn’t for the responsibilities that come with having a dog or the occasional doctor’s appointment, I’d barely know what the sun looks like. Even the room that I’m typing this to you from right now has ZERO windows in it…and I like it that way.
Obviously, I’ve stacked the odds against myself when it comes to making new friends, and truthfully, I’m pretty okay with that too. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I suffer from…oh what are they calling it right now…it’s…’the epidemic of male loneliness’ or some bullshit like that – I don’t fit into that description, and I don’t think my self-imposed isolationism is any kind of debilitating illness either. I don’t really relate to a whole lot of folks is all. I have a hard time believing that much of life is actually real. I am fully aware that forcing myself to socialize is healthy, yet simultaneously, it usually feels like a waste of everyone’s time. So I don’t. Instead, I keep my own company. I shamelessly talk to myself and debate things out loud, regardless of the fact that I’m the only one around to answer. I’m my own best friend.
Let’s be real here – it’s not always easy to reach out and meet new people. Typically, you’ve got all the energy for that stuff when you’re young, and it just gets exponentially harder to do as an adult. I have found that to be true from my experience. I was always the shy kid and in many ways I still am (for all the aforementioned reasons I outlined before…Matrix theory/derealization and such), but I was always well liked, fairly respected by my peers and classmates or whatever, and had no real problem making new friends. I suppose I still had my limitations…like, I only ever felt like I wanted a handful of really close friends for example, but I had a long list of good acquaintances that I personally valued to some degree too. Total strangers…people that I’m like, never going to see again…now THOSE are the kinds of folks I love to meet. You can have some incredible conversations with people you’ll only meet once.
Anyhow. Am I aware that I’m not leading a normal life with respect to socialization and whatnot? Of course I am. Every time I try to link up with old friends, I’ll vaguely remember what I used to be like. When I end up paying for something at the counter of whatever store I’m in, I’m amazed at how little interaction there actually is…it feels like these overwhelming stretches of silence, where I can practically hear each excruciating second ticking along, only to have that broken by some kind of awkward small talk. Hard pass! I’d much rather be at home, daring to visit my coffee pot for another cup every hour and leave it at that. My dog Opie, who I love so damn much (and like, just barely loves me back), is the main reason I tend to leave the house. Two to three times a day, we’re out walking around the city and checking out the community. She loves to socialize, and part of me even suspects that she knows I hate it or at least understands that I need it, so she makes it a priority to say hello to every damn human we pass wherever we are. Super friendly dog…way more friendly than I am; and that’s what I tell everyone.
I suppose my point is that a lack of friendships isn’t necessarily indicative of a lack of trying to form them, or any kind of unhappiness you’d think might be associated from not having too many people around. From my perspective, being an online guy and such, the shift in how we socialize has been fully significant. I’ve heard it said before that we all exist on different timelines now, where you might not even get back to a text message within a week, only to find that when you eventually send a response – nothing happens. There are no consequences for not responding. It’s expected now, strange as it may be. In thinking about what I wanted to write here for this Thursday’s article, I started to really dissect what has and hasn’t worked in the last three friendships I tried to form. There’s both good and bad in the mix…it was interesting to think about and try to understand it all objectively.
Like, there’s this dude that I review a lot of music for here on this very site for example. I don’t go into writing any review or listening to any album thinking that I’m about to form a lifelong friendship with somebody – I’ve been doing this job long enough to know it basically never happens. I’m not saying that it’s impossible…in fact, I know that it’s not, because one of the people I’d consider to be one of my best friends these days is indeed, a musician that I’ve reviewed nearly more times than I can count. Dude lives down south in the USA. We’ve done a video interview together. We’ve sent emails back and forth, which eventually morphed into an endless string of text messages, and I’d say that we exchange those almost daily now. We’ve never once phoned each other, because…well…the phone sucks, don’t it? No Facetime either…just good ol’ text, and the occasional audio message when he gets drunk enough. In all honesty though, it’s practically the same as AI in a way, ain’t it? This particular friend in my life exists almost entirely in digital form. If you’d told me that was the way things would be when I was still in the safety of my twenties, I simply wouldn’t have believed a damn word of it. What would the point be in striking up a friendship with someone you could never physically hang out with on the regular? Yet, I’d be the first to tell you now, based entirely on real-life experience, that this is one of my most cherished friends. I feel absolutely no shame in that whatsoever – in fact, I’m proud of how much this guy means to me. I’m always happy to get another message from him – I know that is part of what makes my life interesting, and I like to believe, in my heart of hearts, that this situation is equally true, vice versa.
So that’s one, and technically speaking, I suppose it’s the least ‘real’ in the physical sense, but it’s also the most ‘real’ in terms of what I feel like I get out of it. Compared to trying to make friends as an adult in the flesh in today’s world? Trust me when I tell ya, I’m way more of a digital advocate than you think. About three months ago, I was certain that my wife & I had met a couple that were destined to become lifelong friends. For a short while, things were amazing. We’d drink together, play games together, and listen to music together…sometimes at our place, sometimes at theirs. We made plans for upcoming concerts, we’d share media back and forth…that kind of thing…books, movies, music – you get it. It was also the opposite of everything I’ve become used to, because they weren’t on social media of any kind whatsoever. In that respect, I can see now how tough that would be to work out in the long run. I suck on the phone, so I try to never use it. When I’d send a message, I’d get stuck on ‘read’ for hours. It all ended up seeming a whole lot tougher to find the compromise we needed in terms of HOW to go about communicating with each other. To make matters worse, both my wife and I got incredibly sick during this time, and after things going so well initially, our withdrawal from daily life caused an incredible amount of confusion to our new friends, who seemed to question whether or not we were actually sick at all, or just hiding from them. As new friends, most adults don’t talk nearly as much as they should in order to work through that kinda shit, so our relationship immediately began to suffer. I’ve been the same dude for so very long that it’s almost embarrassing – what you see on these pages is exactly what I’m like in real life too…I’m an open book – you can ask me anything, any time. I’ve had to learn the hard way several times over that most people aren’t like that at all. Our new friends seemed incapable of being able to communicate whatever the problem was brewing between us, and instead just let the paranoia fester and grow to the point where it seemed to poison the potential friendship altogether. Add in some significant life changes, like cutting out edibles & alcohol, a death in the family, and a few vacations in that same three month time frame, and it started to seem like the friendship between us all wasn’t nearly as meant to be as we once had thought. Maybe it was just bad timing on everyone’s part, I don’t honestly know. All I know is that both my wife and I got sick, hid ourselves away from the world as we tried to get better as quick as we could, and by the time we were healthy it was like everything had changed. I had to really ask myself if that’s the kind of stuff I wanted to go through as a man in his mid-40s, and I gotta say…as special and wonderful as this couple still is from my perspective, I also don’t have a ton of interest trying to navigate how anybody feels about anything else at this point in my life. I go through enough of that confusion on my own perfectly well, thank you very much…to think that I’d want to complicate that or compound it more with trying to figure out how to not piss somebody else off that doesn’t really communicate what it is they don’t even like…I mean…that’s absolutely crazy to me when the alternative is to simply be on my own, knowing that I don’t have to go through that kind of stuff in my beautiful cocoon of isolation. They’re nice people, don’t get me wrong – but I think I just don’t come equipped with the patience it takes for friendships in the physical realm. It’s sad though! I’m not gonna lie, I really thought I found a pair of people I could totally relate to. It’s completely weird to be the ‘open book’ type of person when you know that’s not what you’re getting in return – I have a particularly hard time squaring that circle, because that’s the way my friendships used to be in the past. We’d know everything about each other. You could set your watch by the time you knew you would see them again. You could lend them a book and know they’d return it, eventually, without fear of losing it. Adult friendships are like trying to read a manual on how-to-human, while at the same time looking at a picure image of the same kind of DNA you have with the same amount of enthusiasm you’d take into putting together a piece of IKEA furniture. None of it makes sense, and you don’t REALLY want to do it.
Eventually, we’d see the same couple start to duck down a different route if we were out there walking the dog, the text messages stopped, and we’d go days and days without running into them at all. What else are you supposed to do as adults in that situation? Life gets busy for everyone. Some of that stuff is fully explainable, and other parts of it have much more to do with how we’re all a little bit on the selfish side when it comes to our personal time now. There’s no real incentive for anyone to chase after anything at this stage – everything was still so fresh and new. Like it or not, sometimes the best decision you can make is knowing when to walk away or when to let go. I was entirely convinced that I hadn’t just met a good new friend, but a great one – maybe even two – but only three months later on, I feel like I have no idea how I could have been so foolish. Do I need to feel like that, on any given day, ever? Hell no! Again, especially when the alternative is to simply remain in my own company, where I know my own temperament and everything is usually chill. So…yeah…I mean…my door is always open, and I’m always willing to hear somebody out on their side of what has happened in any kind of scenario, but at the same time, I learned a ton about what I thought I needed in friendships versus what I actually did.
Which brings us to my latest victims – who, are also made of flesh and bone like I am. It’s another couple from right around here where we are, but without any of the expectations or complexities that we were feeling crushed by in our previous friendship. With these two amazing humans, it’s really all about the friendship formed between our dogs, and I couldn’t be happier about it. We still talk – in fact, in many ways I feel super close to these two already, even though we’re just scratching the surface of our time together…you can feel the honesty & a reciprocal respect, and I appreciate that. They’re always happy to see my wife and I – they’re even happier to see our dog, and rightly so…she’s better than we are. It’s an interesting dynamic though…it’s got a real community-like vibe to it all, much like I had experienced when we were living in Ottawa, where you’re not merely making small talk – you care about the people and the stories they’re telling you. It might still be what defines small talk in that you’re probably just discussing a movie or maybe even the weather, but somehow it all seems to matter. When you’re fairly convinced you’re walking in an endless sea of NPCs, finding people that are as down to earth as you feel you are yourself, without feeling like you’ve got to live up to any strange level of expectations or walk on eggshells so you don’t piss someone off at random…is genuinely nice. I mean it – it’s like…soothing for the soul. It’s friendship without the weight of commitment in a way, yet it’s not like you wouldn’t miss these people if they disappeared tomorrow too, you know what I mean? Right now, that feels like where I’m at…I’m enjoying being around these people…I’m even enjoying the conversation and contributing to it too. It’s friendship-light, with an open mind to it becoming more if the situation called for it…but right now, I feel like it’s what works best for everybody involved overall. They’re the third bowl of porridge in the form of people…they’re just right, and I really appreciate them both.
Like I said…there’s good, there’s bad, and how the hell are you supposed to really know what you’re in for when anyone you can meet as an adult comes along with years and years of history, baggage, trauma, experience…sometimes everything snaps perfectly together and feels permanent, sometimes things seem to disintegrate right between your fingers and before you realize it, the moment is over and they’re already gone. Nobody owes you anything in this life as far as I can tell, but if you’re lucky enough, you might be able to find a few people that are willing to listen to your bullshit for a half hour or more. I don’t think I’ve changed much in how I view things. If I’ve called you a friend in this lifetime, I probably still feel that way. If I called you family, I meant what I said. If I was silent and said nothing of the sort…well…I reckon that means something too. Very much like the music I listen to, I want things to mean something…and it can be extremely tough to accept the fact that not everything does. I feel like I’ve learned more about what I don’t want in these past three months than I’ve been able to pinpoint precisely what I do, but I’m also eternally optimistic that the next day always has the opportunity to be better than the day before, and that we have the power to make it that way, by choice. This much I know to not be in dispute whatsoever – we’re all only here for a very short time, relatively speaking. Tell your people you love them. Make sure they know how much they mean to you. Do your best each and every day to make sure they never have the chance to forget it. Friendships will always come and go in many different ways I’m sure, but make sure that those you choose to surround yourself with daily bring true value to your life by adding something positive, instead of taking something away from it. We evolve and grow by sharing our experiences, loving fearlessly, and living our truth out loud in the open.
If you’re not doing that, don’t be surprised when others end up moving on to connect with other people who can.
Having said that, nobody needs to be scared of isolating themselves either – sometimes we all need to recharge for a moment or two. Miscommunication is also a thing…oh lordy is it EVER a thing – it is the true scourge of being human, is it not? So keep that in mind, and keep that mind open to listening to the other side of whatever story you’re involved in…or if explaining your own actions, thoughts, or feelings will help create a better atmosphere for those you want to be around, then find a way to do that. I suppose the point is that we don’t have to hide away from social situations, we just need to find the ones that work best for us as individuals. I do not pretend to know all the answers with respect to any of this, but I do know that every step forward counts for something, and practice makes perfect.
Be excellent to each other.
Thank you for reading.
– Jer @ SBS
