That's a saying which has been on my mind over the last few days. Once without family, you can't replace them directly. There's marriage, agreed, but that's a consciously constructed entity, whereas there's an organic inevitability about family. Certainly about mine.
Friends, though, are another matter.
Obviously there is a large entry on the debit side of leaving a set of friends. Besides the emotional side and the impossibility of replacing individual personalities, there's a shared investment in time and experience. That means that there is a mutual shorthand which maximises understanding while minimising effort. How long does it take to get to the point where a group can laugh together after a single word, all knowing exactly what hasn't actually been said?
But there is a more cheerful side. Some while back I read a psychological study on matchmaking which seems to apply, and it made me reason the following way. It applies in the plural to friends as much as in the singular to romantic attachments.
It's tempting to assume that there is a perfect type of person for you, and maybe even a perfect person. If that is the case, then the chances are very tiny that you've ever met this person, and not much bigger that you ever will. That's simple logic based on the sheer number of people in the world. If you assume that this person is likely to have a similar background to yourself then the odds improve slightly.
If you accept this assumption, then you would expect to be surrounded by many unhappy and lonely people, as very few would ever hit on their perfect partner. As this is clearly not the case, the assumption must be wrong. If so many people are happy together, that means there must be very many more they could have been happy with if they'd looked further afield. They can't all be ludicrously lucky.
My conclusion? There's plenty for everybody. Be friendly, and you'll get friends, some of them people you really didn't expect. Of course, it will take time to build up a deep understanding, but if it's not there at the beginning, that doesn't mean it won't come.
That's what I'm hoping.
2 comments:
"Of course, it will take time to build up a deep understanding, but if it's not there at the beginning, that doesn't mean it won't come."
You are doing a remarkable job of building relationships with as yet unseen friends. Please keep it up.
Friendship eh - well it is only relatively recently that I have begun to understand this concept. And it does seem to connected to investment and time - it takes both but it also takes a recognition that someone is your friend.Sounds like you might be one step ahead of me Survivor in the understanding of what friendships are!
Jill
Post a Comment