Most of the time, the reason for not having friends is an unconscious bad image about ourselves. We don’t reach out because we feel we don’t deserve it. Guess what: the reality obeys our thoughts and puts us outside the real life.
Isolation is not good for you. We are designed to be social animals, to exist and support existence in a larger structure. Whenever you isolate, you’re burning some bridges behind. If you keep burning them, eventually you’ll become just a lonely island.
You may decide you have enough money at some point, but you can never have enough friends.
How To Make New Friends
As I wrote the title above I couldn’t refrain myself from smiling. We, adults, are such a peculiar breed. We need advice even for the simplest of activities. Like how to make new friends.
If you carefully observe how kids behave in groups, you’ll notice something very interesting: they make friends naturally. Unless there is some serious psychological affection (which, most of the time, is induced by bad parenting) kids are making friends as easy as they breathe. “Hi, do you want to play?”. “Yes.” Or, sometimes, “No”. And that’s it.
If you continue to observe kids you’ll also realize they don’t have any heaviness. They’re “elastic”. Jumping from one kid to another, very easily. And yet, their interactions are genuine. When they talk, they talk with all their being, when they laugh, they laugh out loud and when they cry, you really notice it.
That part of a kid behaviour is what we, adults, are missing. That easiness, that playfulness and openness, that feeling of trust that life, or whoever is in charge of the playground, will give us good partners. We, adults, lost that.
We lost it somewhere in the struggle of social relationships. Trying to navigate our own projections, we restrained our normal, honest approach, to a very small circle of people we trust. Our “life long friends”. And then, outside this circle, we’re autistic. At best. Or we’re just faking social interaction, just to get by. To make face.
This will drain us, in the long run. The feeling of comfort we grow from this restrained circle will eventually dry. Without replenishment, everything dies. So, instead of isolation, we should go for more and more sources of interaction.
Of course we should continue to feed our current circle of friends. But not at the cost of the newcomers. Newcomers are good. Refreshing. They give us new perspectives, they challenge us, they support us in ways we can’t really see form the beginning.
Adulthood gave us wisdom and that is priceless. But I don’t think we should sacrifice genuine interaction, an open heart and ongoing fulfilling relationships on the altar of wisdom.
If making new friends requires a little bit of dumbness every once in a while, let’s do it. Let’s be dumb. And happy.
Just like a kid.
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