...when I was younger, I used to look at my friends in a different light. Groups had internal ranks, interactions had a certain amount of oneupmanship, discussions and banter was equal parts entertainment and, vaguely, a competition to see who could get in the most laughs, who was the loudest, who got people agreeing with viewpoints.
1) This shouldn't surprise anyone who attended high school.
2) People who by my age still say that only young girls were like this probably have little hope left for them as human beings.
But the point is, we grow up. Eventually you stop looking at friends and interactions in this way. You don't become friends with someone to raise your standing in a group. You stop the bullshit games, where you constantly second guess your status and that of people you spend the most time with. You stop trying to score points with people or remove them from others. Friends become family, which means you can let your guard down around them and just be yourself.
So if you're a friend of mine still, then it means if we have a problem, you'll tell me about it and we'll sort it out. It means I can trust you to be honest about how you feel about me, and vice versa. It means we don't always have to take each other seriously, but at the right times we will. It means not having to be awkward around each other because of unspoken tension.
I don't always get this right... who does? Sometimes I'm awkward around people who I genuinely like but don't get to see that much. And sometimes I don't say when I have a problem right away, when I should. So for those times I'm sorry and I'll make an effort to be more honest in future.
As a person who doesn't spend much time with his extended family, I guess this is also a post to say thanks to those of you who have become my larger family over the years, and that you guys inspire me to be a better person, all the time. KEEP IT REAL YO. Or something.
3 comments:
Alternative, more cynical interpretation:
In high school, you're not very good at organising your social group into a hierarchy, and you're not very good at picking up subtle social cues about it. Therefore, a lot of the social status stuff is overt, cruel, and crude.
When you're older, you're freaking excellent at judging social interactions and picking up on hierarchies. Plus, you're not forced to hang out with people from outside your social srtrata so much. The social machinations are therefore more subtle, less cruel, and more rigid.
But hey, maybe you're right?
Hrmmmm. Maybe?
I can see your point, but I also find that as I get older hierarchies with friends seem to matter less and less. It could be just me, but I've observed the same thing with others too that I've talked with.
I'd add the caveat that I only mean this to include close friends and not social/work groups in general, because of course hierarchies still exist. And it could be that what I'm observing is just people settling into their group's structure and becoming more comfortable with it, perhaps?
Yeah, I dunno. Mostly I was just being cranky. I certainly FEEL like hierarchies amongst my friends matter less, but then I think feelings are an unreliable source of information.
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