I originally began this post as a discussion between the differences of being ‘alone’ and being ‘lonely’, but after I reviewed the content, I figured I’d change tact a little. So, I’ll go into describing a bit about my take on friendships and how I like to develop them. It works for me, because that’s just my style, and I know that it doesn’t for everyone since we all fall at varying places along the introversion – extroversion scale. This is my take on it anyways…
Choose friendships like you choose your food
Last… November (2008) I had what was probably my most vivid re-realization of a very important principle – choose your friends with discernment.
Depending on your style, meeting new people can be a highly invigorating experience. Everyone is obviously very different with a whole new set of experiences and values to bring to each and every encounter. Meeting many new people increases scope for exposure to new ideas and ways of approaching the life and engaging the world. It is easy to allow yourself to be swept up into that constant stream of engagement, and I did. Several times. It was fun and exciting, though ultimately for me very exhausting since my nature tends towards introversion.
The more people you meet over a given period of time, the less time you can spend with each person. The less time you spend with each person, the less time available to get to know them, unless they are fairly real from the outset. Since any strong bond/relationship is formed when both parties open up and let down their guard with the other, a process that typically takes some time, the chances are high that you’re not actually spending much quality time with anyone. And in my experience, that leaves me drained and feeling ultimately very lonely. I can remember the feelings quite plainly and it forced me to take stock of my situation and figure out where I was going wrong.
After repeatedly going in and out of these phases where I’d be doing a lot of meet-and-greet, and then hibernating after I’d burnt myself out, I realised once and for all (hopefully) that, for me, focusing on more friendships leaves me with a feeling of lesser connectedness. Somehow, the more connections I had, the far more lonely I felt. Less is definitely more in this case. As with many things in life, it’s about balance and you have to be aware of the point you may pass whereupon you experience diminishing returns.
At the time, I made the analogy with fast/junk food, in that I was gorging on low-sustenance relationships to the point I was almost dependent on them – since they don’t feed your soul as much as your closer relationships do, you need more of them and more often in order to maintain the illusion that you’re fulfilled and satisfied. The problem comes with these “junk-food relationships” is that those people don’t respect you and don’t make the efforts with you that you’d expect from a true friendship. Only by allowing in those relationships that show mutual respect and commitment can you hope to feel properly connected.
I’m not saying that those people you don’t focus on are “bad” people, but rather your connection with them isn’t as deep as it could be and that if you spread yourself too thin, you come away with very little in the end. By focusing on fewer relationships and giving more time to them and more room to grow, you get rewarded with healthy and nutritious friendships.
I’m not sure how far the junk-food analogy can be taken here… but it made sense in my head at the time. 
Another balancing act
It seems to be a recurring theme, but I think it’s all a balancing act in the end. With places like Tokyo where you have a relatively high turnover of people coming into and out of your life, in order to maintain a circle of friends there, you need to work to discover and build news relationships, while at the same time working on and nourishing the ones you already have. I for one never quite mastered it, but once I had the realisation as I described earlier, I never went too far the wrong way and drained myself to the point where I felt lonely in the city again. Perhaps I went too far the other way by focusing too much on what was there without forging many new friendships, but the downside that comes from that never really developed because I ended up leaving the country.
I now have the problem at the moment, since I’m constantly in a state of transition, of how much effort do I put into new encounters when I’m only going to be in a place a day or few days at a time. Forcing myself to engage new and unknown people is a new skill for me to learn and develop, which I was aware I’d have to do long before I left Tokyo. I can only get better at it I guess…
This post is a little random, but I guess perhaps it shows a bit of insight into how I view friendships… basically I’ll concentrate most of my efforts with those people who are happy, open, honest, sincere and that put the same or more efforts in as me.
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