Imperfect

revive adult friendships

In Men suck at maintaining friendships, Varun suggests that friendships were held together within education by repeatedly inhabiting the same physical spaces. While his proposal of fixing this with texts can work, repurposing childhood's cohabitation could produce greater benefits with less downsides for adults. How can the emergent friendship of externally constrained contexts - like school, work, prison, and other proximal spaces - arise elsewhere? Could their innate sense of regularity be foundational for success?

Sometimes, events within third spaces like classes, clubs, and bars yield or exceed expected results. Yet, some encounter conditions prohibiting their participation like working from home or otherwise. Others haven't found success in such environment and have written them off as no good. If visiting or hosting such events doesn't fit your bill, can you possibly mimic the practice in your own space?

Host events for interests pertinent to both you and those you want around you. If you can't host, encourage those who can so you grace their space with your presence. A lightly-held invitation of regular camaraderie can eventually interject even the most complicated of schedules. Instead of worrying over the entropy of unfamiliar spaces, you or someone you know can vet then invite those most meaningful to the mission at hand. Your friends have friends you haven't met yet. You can get to know them from within comfy spaces. Creative types stay consistent with initiatives like podcasts, interviews, and other insightful deliverables. So can you from this physical event management perspective. Such iterated friendship could even arise opportunities to synergize calendars by the power of teamwork.

Silent pressure toward optimizing connection can cripple your psyche when detours and postponement inevitably occur. Counter that by proclaiming abdicated expectations and weaving in redundancy plans. Even for people who can't make it, mere invitations can make people feel worthwhile, thought about, and loved. Understanding and appreciation for those who must renege their attendance keeps up momentum for when they can attend. Accepting circumstances prior to, during, and after hangouts go along way toward making the best of time had with yourself and others.

For those mostly stuck as digital acquaintances, do what you can to siphon them into innermost layers of friendship or your physical world. How strong do likes signal meaningful communication relative to other modes? If "a picture is worth a thousand words", could a word be worth one thousand likes? Some stimuli may even justify the effort to call someone or leave an audio message. Conveying tone can be difficult through text after all. How could comparisons of communication like these change the way you approach both physical and virtual interactions? If either physical or virtual friendships work best for you, how can you uplift the lagging mode?

In homework, Mason explains how learning in his own time after school works:

The way I can learn something on my own time, is to learn by doing. I learnt how to use Unity by trying to use it. And I learnt how to draw by drawing.

In the same vein, could learning how to make friends be informed by trying to do so? Making survivable mistakes or finding incompatible people means you can update your definition and routines of friendship for the better. If you don't know where to begin, tap into your existing friends for pointers. If even they struggle with befriending to where it's a collective problem, how do friends of friends and beyond find the practice easy if not fun?

The Gardener's friendships says that "as you get older, friendships drift apart like icebergs." While the loss of friend groups shouldn't be forgotten or neglected, there's plenty of room for recovery through reconnection or making new friends altogether. You not getting back your past makes ensuring that your inner child gets the present you feel it deserves that much more important. Friendship isn't just about reciprocating interests of your own or others' inner children, but about sharing interest in others too. Sometimes all that is needed is an accurate enough reprise of the past: the old group chat, video calls, breakfast outings, and other friendly moments. An invitation can be all it takes to remind yourself or others that reviving friendships is possible.

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