I was thinking … with so much possibilities around us to connect, why does it feel more difficult than ever connecting with friends?
We live in the world of perpetual change. Every day we are getting new information that requires processing, bringing us very often to the point, where we want to disconnect completely from everything. Our grandfathers and parents worked hard in order for us to get a desk job, while we are more and more attracted with their simple life, going back to a village and raising chickens for a living 😊. I know that this is with a (slight) exaggeration, but we found ourselves more and more questioning the “grind“, as life offers us so much more than that. Be that as it may, the daily routine, puts us in a strange situation, where at the end of the day, we only want to disconnect from everything, strangely enough, taking our phone and scrolling through the endless feed of “information“. Maybe if we have the mental energy, take a book and go to sleep with the thought in mind that tomorrow we will go back thinking that the weekend is so far away.
We are pushing ourselves more and more into automating our lives, fighting thorough calendars and group chats, trying to find the most efficient way of squeezing a bit more time. As such there is a slight problem in getting the time also for other people in our lives. There is something on the back of our head that tells us, we should keep in touch, we should pick up the phone and call our friend, but there is always … later. And so the years pass and later becomes someday … someday becomes never … I might be a bit emotional on this subject but with years passing by and my move to another country some years ago, there is a pattern which I noticed. We tend to prioritize things and decompressing over a call with a good friend.
It is a phenomena which I noticed firstly in myself than in others. There are countless times when I thought, that it would be nice to know, what one or another friend is doing, how their life is. And most of the time, the thought passed away being buried under other “priorities”. Of course it is understandable that the time, with getting older becomes more precious, but I would argue that giving a friend a 5-10 min call would top anytime, checking your Instagram feed or the latest football results.
If you disagree with me, dear reader, ask yourself the following question “What if they are no longer with us tomorrow/next week/next 6 months etc?“. You might think that I am exaggerating and you always will get the opportunity to make that call, but that is simply something we never know. We might anticipate many things in this life, but not, how long we will be still here. If you take something from this post it is the following:
make time to pickup the phone
set a reminder and blocker in your calendar
don’t forget (at least) that call in a year for congratulating them for their birthday
use applications like Offtogether.tryfailgrow.info or Friends.tryfailgrow.info to get those free days or calendar synchronized.(these are only as example, use whatever app is better for you)
I was blessed with having friends, dating more than 25 years and we still have difficulties getting ourselves into a call. Each with it’s own family, program and priorities … we also forget the importance of getting those 10 minutes or hour a month to see what the others are doing. Nevertheless we try to compensate by seeing each other when we come back visiting our home country. It is not an easy task but not impossible.
So pick up the phone, call or write someone close to you and keep that connection alive!
Pe data viitoare, TFG
