You are annoyed by the amount of communication around practical matters with your friends – in some instances, too little, and in others, too much.
Before his 4-day trip to Boston, he asks you to pick him up from the airport on his return, and during his time away he has neglected to remind you. Are you to remember not just the favor, but the time and date as well? You find his previous text with the details, but then you text him anyway what time again? as a reminder that your schedule is flexible but still planned, and that you have other important things to remember.
Half a year later, he asks you to pick him up from the airport again, and this time he reminds you the day before. But how could you forget such an important thing like picking up your friend from the airport? Does he believe you don’t care, that you don’t listen?
You care about being a generous friend and a good listener.
Sometimes unwittingly but more importantly often intentionally, you hide in your casual conversations with new acquaintances quizzes on matters important to you, holding correct answers as price of admission, and wrong ones as grounds for dismissal.
No, she does not like that movie. Which sucks, because you were getting along so well.
You know where you stand, and where you want others to stand.
You have a compulsive need to take up as little space as possible, to be fluid in every situation.
On a trip upstate with a couple of friends you do not care which way you go. You do not care where you stop to eat. You have made being around you as easy as not being around you. From the back of the car you ask them to put on a song but they can’t hear you — you insist it is not important, this they hear. In the hotel you quickly end the debate over who should get the beds, you’re happy to take the pull-out. You do this again at the next hotel and at the AirBnB, taking the cot, the air mattress.
But though you’ve given them the better sleep options, over the course of the trip they begin to appear tired, stretched out. In your efforts to minimize, have you demanded others expand? No, you have never said this. In fact, you have never asked much of anyone. You do not let your wants influence others – you hold them closely, let them ferment.
You are easygoing and casual, and your lack of presence gives space for others’ desires to bloom.
You believe that your close relations know you well, and in knowing you well, require little guidance to your thoughts and feelings.
On a work trip across the country, you miss your friends. You feel distant from them, even more than you have lately. They haven’t called or texted. (Have you?) Each moment of silence is an opportunity to reach out to you that they have not taken. A mountain of misunderstanding grows larger, how will they ever get down? You could guide them, but that would require shouting, and you are exhausted. It’s a good time to leave, they cannot see you, don’t care to. Your journey will take you to others who do.
Your maze of feelings is beautiful and deserves reverential study, the guarded prize at the end needs nothing less than a loving, clairvoyant art.
The friends you collect as you move through life are progressively more accomplished and interesting, and in each successor’s wake you find a cruel impulse toward an old friend.
When your friend from high school says she is coming, you are filled with dread. She is still small-minded and unrefined, she has not changed. (But you have, haven’t you?) You will either have to find something else to do, maybe get drunk in the park and look for the fireworks, or bring her along to the party and watch over her the whole time, pull aside your new friends now and again to apologize for what she says.
When you’ve had to do this before, your new friends, bless them, were kind and sympathetic – they liked her, they said. And that one time when some new friends were not kind and sympathetic? You defended your old friend, and those new friends are friends no more.
You do care, and you are loyal, even if that loyalty is sometimes swallowed by a fear of being stuck. Don’t be afraid, your new friends signal your growth. Be bold, your growth will inevitably cause turbulence for those from your past.
Hold dear your loyalty – it shines on all of your friends, from new to old, high to low.
the rock
This rock crushed my great uncle. He had it coming. - jar