How to make friends 101

Trying to make, and keeping friendships as an adult is difficult.  So much more difficult than it was when we were young and involved in so many more things.  I have had my struggles with friendships as an adult, I have made some wonderful friendships, but I have also lost some as well.

As an adult, it seems to be harder to meet people, and when you do, it's hard finding time to work on that friendship.  When we were young there wasn't any work involved.  If you wanted to play you just did, and usually played on a regular basis.  When I was a kid we all played as a block.  We would have games of hide and seek, or kick the can, all involving as many kids on the block that wanted to play.  As an adult it's harder to get a group of people together at once let alone agree on playing one thing.  Groups are harder still, as I see it, since as adults we all bring different things to the table, not like as children, where we all had clean slates and no expectations.  Being a grown up sometimes just isn't fair!

I have learned over the course of the last few years that true friendships don't happen over night, they don't happen easily, for the most part, and they are never without complications.   I feel true friendships happen little by little over the course of many years, and even though there really isn't a great deal of time for them, the true ones know you are friends despite the time.

I have also learned that you can't just push yourself on people.  I know of some people who think, well I met you once, now we can be friends on facebook...cause we are now bff's.  That's not how it works, it takes time, effort, and determination.  In this day and age of facebook, it seems that just because I know you means we are friends, and that's just the end of it.  No, friendship doesn't work that way, not in my book.  Yes there are people I am friends with on facebook that I have little or no interaction with, or haven't had in years, but that doesn't mean that I am going to add someone that I have only met once at a party and now feel I should be privy to their every action on facebook.  And then there are people who think that because they like something you have said or have posted, and maybe made a few comments over the course of a few months that this makes a friendship...it doesn't. 

We really have turned into a society where we tend to take the easiest route.  If it's easier to just interact on facebook or through text, well that's what we do.  Instant gratification, instant social life.  To me, that doesn't make up for the face to face interaction. I enjoy learning from a person, the way they gesture with their hands, the way they keep eye contact, or just the way they smile when they are telling me a story about their life.  Reading it on text or in an email is just not personal enough for me, it doesn't make me feel like I have really connected with another person, it just makes me feel like I have read something about someone I know.  Yet there are people who feel that is good enough. 

I fear for the next generation, I hope that they are able to hold onto the personal contact, somehow.  We move further and further away from real intimate relationships, we move further away from what I consider real life.   For the most part.

Facebook is not real life folks.  Yes, it can keep us up to date with those who are important to us, it's easy, but it's not real.   It is not a substitute for friendship.  What facebook does is it just makes keeping up with others easier.  Yes, some feel the need to use it as their platform for whatever cause they support, or don't support, I am guilty of this from time to time, but for the most part it is just simply a way to keep informed about the outside fringes of someones life.

More than once I have heard parents tell me that their teenage children don't go out and do anything.  They are home all the time, they don't have a lot of friends, they never go out on Friday nights.  As parents don't you have to push them a bit, show them that nothing will happen to them if they go and give it a try, maybe live outside their comfort zone sometimes.  Instead, they sit in their rooms, texting to people thinking that's friendship.  Sad isn't it, but it's becoming more and more prevalent.  Why would those kids go out and do and meet when we aren't.  We hide in our safe little cocoons texting and facebooking, why be surprised when our kids follow suit.  The next generation are going to be very sad people I think, if we don't do something to change it.

If you are feeling like you don't have real friends, go out, make the effort, do the work, volunteer, give of yourself, find other's with the same interests, live outside your comfort zone...because if all that is comfortable is texting and facebooking you are not living, you are just existing.  Don't assume just because someone you know knows you that it makes you friends, it doesn't.  Make your own friends, find the ones that fit you, not someone else because that's easier. 

You are given one life, live it to the fullest, stop being afraid, stop living in your cocoon, start doing. 


Just one example of what our reality is today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5ffHd7O3yQ&feature=player_embedded#!