At the end of a wholly unproductive self-allocated 10-6 workday (which will now have to be extended, as I have been in one of those stupors where I’ve no energy to do anything but I’m not sleepy enough to nap… yes I tried!), during which I was meant to tackle a myriad of applications and preparations that should really have been done earlier, I procrastinate further by sorting out phone photos and find this little gem from Tuesday’s Thought of the Day at Stockwell station.
Some time ago, Steffy said something to me that’s been lingering in my mind for the past week: that if something is mine, I don’t have to try so hard to hold on to it. Perhaps the allure of the past lies in the 20/20 vision of hindsight, the fact that I know I had all that, and I want to go back to being sure, to being certain. And now I don’t know what I have – but then, I know that back then, I didn’t know what I had either.
I’ve been wondering (time-wastingly, as usual) if the process of making friends gets so exponentially harder as one gets older so as to disadvantage all the new people one meets (this disadvantage is two-way, so fair’s fair), as far as forming genuine, lasting, rock-solid friendships go. My old girlfriends are always going to be golden in my book simply because we’ve spent half our lives together and nobody I get to know now is going to be able to compete with that, not because they’re any less delightful or likeable (I’ve often felt a clicky-feeling with people that’s made me think we could’ve been really, really good friends had we met under different circumstances).
Let’s say the BBC is right and that there is a limit to how many truly close friends one person can have. The average circle of friends, according to the article, consists of an inner circle of 5 core people plus additional layer of 10 to form a central group, some of whom may be family members. The numbers apply pretty much accurately to me so I’m egotistically assuming that most people are about the same. Obviously, by the time you leave secondary and pre-university schooling, these 15 spots will probably be all filled up! Where does that leave the new people you meet for the rest of your life, which presumably will be several times the length of your early school years? Are they all destined to be stuck in the intermediate-outer circles even if you could have been legendary BFFs had you met earlier in your lives?
It sounds ridiculous to immediately condemn all future attempts at friendship as doomed right out of the door – and I have made some amazing friends and met some fantastic people in York and London who’ve become really important to me. Maybe in 10 years’ time, when I’ve had a decade to spend with new(er) friends, that feeling of mutual understanding and camaraderie will have grown to a comparable extent to that which I currently enjoy with old friends. A part of me thinks I’m probably overthinking all this and friendship is really not that complicated, you either get along with people or you don’t (and yeah I can see the straightforward appeal of that line of thought). Another part of me, though, feels like it really does get harder and harder now to form the kind of friendships so easily forged in childhood. I want to, I really do. But just as I bring the baggage of innumerable memories and experiences to every new acquaintance I make, so too does the other person, and I feel it; that uphill climb to scale those years, to really connect and get to know them inside out, starting right from the bottom of the mountain where old friends have had the headstart well before me.
Anyway, well… I don’t really think I have a neat, stunning conclusion or an answer (how humanities-like, right?) to end this meandering chain of thought. Just a lot of questions. And the constant reminder to myself that maybe some of what I want is mine already, just as it was back in school. Maybe I don’t have to try so hard to hang on to fledgling friendships formed here. Maybe I should just relax. These things just happen naturally most of the time, don’t they?
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cui
LcT
I guess it’s not really cos we spent x years of our lives together rather than cos we spent a great deal of time in those schoolyears together that forges the friendship? but there’s still maintaining the friendship after all.. I definitely consider some of the yorkies as my core group of friends, though I actually feel like everyone is in the outer layer and there’s definitely less than 5 in the inner circle..
and I guess it’s harder to make new friends now cos you somehow feel like you do have enough friends and in a very utilitarian way, it may seem like a huge huge effort to make for the new friends since you don’t technically “need” more.. plus not like you have to spend half the day together with each other anymore.. I don’t know if I make sense.. it’s too early in the morning..
Reply to skyenono you totally do make sense. i was thinking that in a very practical sense, people just have limited time and energy for all their endeavours, including keeping up a friendship, and so utilitarianly speaking once you hit the limit of your time/energy you just cannot admit any more into the inner circle! and yup i think just the fact of being stuck with each other for the large part of the day in school created a far more conducive environment for the forging of strong friendships, as opposed to a few hours every week in uni… and by the time you get to work your friend quota will probably have filled up enough so that colleagues, despite being lumped with you for the whole day, don’t break into the inner circles so easily.
i think too much about this!
Reply to cui