Detail: Connecting
Being a good friend is a vague concept that doesn’t come easily to everyone, so logical minded people need to think of it logically. How to connect with people and if your life were a story, you would be a character nobody wants the author to kill off. Connecting between a few close friends involves two criteria: a familiarity with each other in that you spontaneously hang out, and a closeness that you share things with each other and help each other grow into a good person. It is not a complicated concept but like any concept it needs to be discovered, all the underlying logistics and conventions must be figured out, and effort must be put in, for any of this to happen.
A familiarity with each other is something to build up, but sometimes is not completely controllable. Take my friend M., who lives about a ten minute walk from my place. She is one of the two targets I am choosing for this project because she seems the most likely that I could develop this familiarity with. One of the reasons is that she lives so conveniently close, and the other is that she is different than all my other friends: my other friends are inflexible with their schedules. If I want to do something after class, they will probably not be able to because their parents are picking them up or they have to be home for supper. M. lives in an apartment, and she is more open to hanging out or going out for coffee or to a bar. So she is one of the targets, because she’s the most likely to go along with this familiarity concept, and then all I have to do is the other concepts.
The second criteria is sharing. In the book Ender’s Shadow, Bean is able to notice that people came to Ender with their problems, but Ender never seemed to share his problems. To be good friends with each other, people need to be able to share their thoughts. Not all of their thoughts, but they need to be able to confide in each other sometimes. You also need to help each other grow with a sense of humor and a sense of how to be a good friend. To achieve these goals to a given degree of accuracy, you have to observe and notice things about people. You need to remember them too, or at least avoid being too scatterbrained. You notice things, quietly, and then when the time and place is right you share a thought of insight about you or them, more personal than you’d share with a random person. And then if you have picked a good friend, and judged a good time and topic, they will want to respond. You will talk and then you will be within the leagues of people who have close friends.
All of this assumes knowledge of underlying concepts of logistics and conventions that people use to establish a basis of friendship with someone. Things like general ideas of where to go when you hang out, and inviting people over without being afraid of the telephone, and differences between parties and just chilling. But not too confining an outlook that you’re scared to hang out with a male friend because people might think you’re dating. Knowledge like this comes from observation, and then you need to not worry too much what random people think of you.
It all takes effort. You could call it training to make your life better in all aspects. You have to get up off your ass and do things, learn to speak comfortably on the phone, and eat well and exercise so that you don’t spend the whole time feeling fat. Calmly and logically, you make corrections to your bad habits.
With all this effort and knowledge and a little bit of creativity, you can create a meaningful friendship. A friendship where both people hang out spontaneously, and share thoughts and sense of humor with each other. Some people just “get” it, while the more logical among us have to understand it before implementing a plan to be a better friend.
Being a good friend is a vague concept that doesn’t come easily to everyone, so logical minded people need to think of it logically. How to connect with people and if your life were a story, you would be a character nobody wants the author to kill off. Connecting between a few close friends involves two criteria: a familiarity with each other in that you spontaneously hang out, and a closeness that you share things with each other and help each other grow into a good person. It is not a complicated concept but like any concept it needs to be discovered, all the underlying logistics and conventions must be figured out, and effort must be put in, for any of this to happen.
Image from I Love You Man (found on google).
A familiarity with each other is something to build up, but sometimes is not completely controllable. Take my friend M., who lives about a ten minute walk from my place. She is one of the two targets I am choosing for this project because she seems the most likely that I could develop this familiarity with. One of the reasons is that she lives so conveniently close, and the other is that she is different than all my other friends: my other friends are inflexible with their schedules. If I want to do something after class, they will probably not be able to because their parents are picking them up or they have to be home for supper. M. lives in an apartment, and she is more open to hanging out or going out for coffee or to a bar. So she is one of the targets, because she’s the most likely to go along with this familiarity concept, and then all I have to do is the other concepts.
The second criteria is sharing. In the book Ender’s Shadow, Bean is able to notice that people came to Ender with their problems, but Ender never seemed to share his problems. To be good friends with each other, people need to be able to share their thoughts. Not all of their thoughts, but they need to be able to confide in each other sometimes. You also need to help each other grow with a sense of humor and a sense of how to be a good friend. To achieve these goals to a given degree of accuracy, you have to observe and notice things about people. You need to remember them too, or at least avoid being too scatterbrained. You notice things, quietly, and then when the time and place is right you share a thought of insight about you or them, more personal than you’d share with a random person. And then if you have picked a good friend, and judged a good time and topic, they will want to respond. You will talk and then you will be within the leagues of people who have close friends.
All of this assumes knowledge of underlying concepts of logistics and conventions that people use to establish a basis of friendship with someone. Things like general ideas of where to go when you hang out, and inviting people over without being afraid of the telephone, and differences between parties and just chilling. But not too confining an outlook that you’re scared to hang out with a male friend because people might think you’re dating. Knowledge like this comes from observation, and then you need to not worry too much what random people think of you.
It all takes effort. You could call it training to make your life better in all aspects. You have to get up off your ass and do things, learn to speak comfortably on the phone, and eat well and exercise so that you don’t spend the whole time feeling fat. Calmly and logically, you make corrections to your bad habits.
With all this effort and knowledge and a little bit of creativity, you can create a meaningful friendship. A friendship where both people hang out spontaneously, and share thoughts and sense of humor with each other. Some people just “get” it, while the more logical among us have to understand it before implementing a plan to be a better friend.
Image from http://fairytalediaries.tumblr.com/
