This is hard to imagine. When I think back to growing up in Colorado, I’m reminded of the fact that my two older siblings and myself all went through middle and high school independently of each other. I shared part of that time with my younger brother, and as adults we’re very similar, but we’re definitely different from our two older siblings. So if we were all the same age? I think we would be okay, overall, but I don’t know that I would be close enough friends with my older brother because he would still be off doing his own thing.
I can’t say anything specific about how I might relate to my nieces and nephews if they were the same age as me, because personally they haven’t developed enough emotionally/mentally to have a strong connection with me on my level. That being said, if for some reason we flipped the script on the prompt by saying I was suddenly the same age as them? Yes, I could see myself getting along with them as friends.
Now, time to consider my dad, who is almost twice my age. Given the different eras we grew up in, with different values and priorities, I don’t know that I would get along with him if he were my age. Honestly, he seems like a very different person from the man I knew growing up in Colorado to who he is today (and has been for the better part of the last decade.)
Truly, this prompt is a difficult thought experiment to run in my mind. It’s hard to judge the potential character of people who haven’t grown up yet, or who have aged out of the norms of society, and determine if you could be friends with them.
How did you bond with one of the best friends you’ve ever had?
“500 Journal Prompts” by Robert Duff
I found this prompt via a reddit post, and this one caught my attention as I glanced over the first dozen or so. The following post is actually going to cover two people who are basically from the same source.
I don’t believe I’ve mentioned how I landed in my current situation, but it started back in college about 2009 or 2010. My dad, who worked at the technical university I ended up going to, mentioned that one of his colleagues had a daughter about my age that was also attending classes there, and that maybe I’d run into her in a shared class. I’ll admit, at first I had mixed feelings about this possibility. I hadn’t made a great many friends while attending classes because of the huge age range of the students (anywhere from 18 to 65) and the fact that this university didn’t have campus housing because all the programs were designed around working adults trying to get a degree to basically change careers. So, this potential new friend was an exciting opportunity to meet someone more my age that I might actually be able to commiserate with because we had something in common (both our dad’s working together) but at the same time I couldn’t help but have a sneaking suspicion that my dad might be trying to set me up with her. Regardless, we did end up having a class together.
Unfortunately, that class was Computer Assisted Statistics. I wasn’t great with Statistics to begin with, but something that made it worse was the teacher. It turned out that my dad’s colleague, this young lady’s dad, was our teacher. Before I get too far, he is a super nice guy! There weren’t any issues with him as a person or him potentially targeting me for sitting next to his daughter. Rather, the issue that a great many of us had was in his ability to teach the material at the time. Even his daughter struggled to learn from him, and several of us did fairly poorly in the class. This didn’t go unnoticed by the administration, in part because of how many of us went and complained to student advisors. So, we got a free pass to take the class again, and we forged a new friendship through awkward adversity.
So, this first time of taking the class is where I met one of the two people who would later go on to becoming one of my best friends. The second time we took the class is where I met the other person.
When it came time to retake the class, I ended up meeting this young lady’s boyfriend at the time. This guy was fairly nerdy and into video games, just like myself, but after that class I didn’t keep in as strong of contact with him. He was, and still is to this day, very much not socially outgoing (and this is probably part of what would lead to them peacefully ending their relationship). So, while I kept in contact with her over the following years, through graduation and beyond, he and I fell out of touch. Until a couple years or so after we had all graduated college, somewhere about 2013 or 2014, when I saw him post something on Facebook.
I was living on my own at the time, having finally moved out of my parents place, and my brother and his wife had asked me to move out of theirs to make room for their growing family. I was struggling to find things to do at home during my downtime because I also was not exceptionally social (which kind of worked against me living in a downtown apartment, where I could walk to the bars and meet people). At some point I spotted his post about building PC’s, and I don’t know what really compelled me to do it, but I sent him a message! I hadn’t actually talked to the guy much before, even when we were taking classes together, but his post intrigued me, and everything was downhill from there.
We started to hang out and chat about PC part’s and then he helped me build my first gaming PC. After that, we kept in touch regularly and I met his new girlfriend at the time who seemed super nice. We all got to know each other better over the next six months or so, and then they were talking about getting a new roommate to help reduce rent costs. They knew I was paying on medical debt at the time and asked me if I thought it would be cool to move in with them. It should be obvious that I said yes without hesitation. So, we all moved in together, sharing a three bedroom apartment with one of the rooms being our shared gaming office, and I’ve been living with at least him ever since. Their relationship didn’t actually last long, sadly, and it turned out she had red flags and issues that weren’t super obvious until later. I had the unfortunate honors of helping them mediate their break up, because she tried to move out without telling either of us and screw us on the rent. Ultimately, a new friendship forged through the fires of awkward adversity.
And that’s the story of how I met two people who would go on to become some of my best friends! It’s funny, sometimes, how the world can connect people you might not have met otherwise, and go on to build strong bonds with them over time (even after long gaps of no communication!)
What is one thing you can do to step outside of your comfort zone today/this week/month/year?
I don’t know about today specifically, but I could tell you that there are a few things I can do to step out of my comfort zone in the future that are highly likely to actually happen, or did already.
Tomorrow (rather than today): go to the gym during a busier time of the day instead of the later part of evenings when there aren’t other people around.
This week: I could go to a local game store event for a card game I play. It’s a public event, and I always feel out of place going to these kinds of events by myself to play against strangers.
This month: I don’t know if I’ll have something good for this one. It’s October and we’re already 2/3rds through the month.
This year: I’ll be flying by myself to an unfamiliar state to meet online friends for the first time in person! I’m actually excited for this one, so even though it’s outside of my comfort zone in multiple ways, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
I’m sure there are other things I could come up with, and maybe I will after I post this, but I’ll keep those for future writing.
Age really changes what we value in so many things, especially in different social climates/dynamics.
When I was a kid, I probably just valued friends I could hang out with because we had the same interests or hobbies. That didn’t change much when I got into my teens.
College and beyond is where things REALLY took a turn.
Heartache and betrayal in the arena of romance changes how you see people and interact with them. It changes what you value in people that you start to forge close relationships with (platonic and romantic alike). We may be going down different paths, meeting new people and getting into different hobbies at this time. Trust and loyalty became incredibly important through most of my twenties because of some of these things. I won’t go into the nitty gritty details of my love life, but suffice to say that there were some ladies that may have cheated or just not been completely honest about their feelings, and the latter applied to platonic friendships as well.
Talking about my thirties now (and I shudder to think that I’m only a few years away from the cusp of 40) I still value trust and loyalty, but I prioritize myself and certain other things differently so that I have more room for forgiveness, because people make mistakes. As long as something isn’t done maliciously and I didn’t put myself in a position to be hurt, I can be flexible and forgive a lot easier. Other things that I value that have come up in these recent years are communication and transparency.
In my mind these four values of trust, loyalty, communication, and transparency (as well as some others that can be tossed in without mention) can all be wrapped up into a singular package value: Respect.
To be clear, when I talk about trust and loyalty, or respect, my friends don’t “owe” me anything and vice versa, so I don’t demand respect be given without respect being returned. I just try to live by that Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Respect me and I’ll respect you.
Life has a funny way of putting obstacles in our way that we find to be either insurmountable or require a sacrifice, but what if you have convinced yourself that it was life doing this and not yourself? The everyday choices we make can sometimes have unforeseen affects far into our future.
This prompt has me revisiting some of the thoughts I’ve had over the years regarding WHY I’ve made certain choices or remained where I’m at (at that time) in life.
After my family moved to South Dakota, the dynamic of my life changed dramatically. Sure, my family had some horses when I lived in Colorado, but that was a relatively recent change due to my Dad meeting and marrying my Stepmom, but I basically went from a suburban teenager to a “farm kid” practically over night. I couldn’t walk or ride my bike to go hang out with friends who all lived within a half mile radius of my house. I lived multiple country miles away from anyone in my class, and had a roughly eight mile drive just to get to school. I had to pick up daily chores to take care of all of the horses my parents kept “collecting” at the time (really they were mostly rescues or small number related to breeding.) This all adds up to a sacrifice that I had no say in and was forced to make. I don’t really regret having to go through that, because I was able to learn a lot about a completely different way of living and the hardships that some people face out here.
Not long after this time was when I would graduate high school and go on to college. I was fortunate that I lived close enough to the city to attend college while still living at home, so I took advantage of that, but it made it difficult to build meaningful relationships with my peers. That choice meant I sacrificed opportunities for social growth, and I’m lucky I even met the handful of people that I still talk to today.
Leading to college graduation and beyond is where I really look back at my life and think about the sacrifices I convinced myself I had to make. I continued to live at home until about the age of 25. I had a job and “friends” that I invested time into, but I was still stuck at home and helping out on the farm. Eventually, I did make the choice to move out, which meant sacrificing income (I lived at home practically rent free because I had an arrangement with my parents to do chores in exchange) that I had otherwise been funneling into video games and other entertainment. I didn’t move far away, as I still helped with chores on the farm, but the choices in living arrangements and jobs thereafter are where I feel I sacrificed the most. I never strayed far from home, from my family. While my sister moved further and further from home, chasing jobs and dreams (she did eventually move back home), I stagnated. Year after year, new things would come up that impacted my family in ways that I made the same sacrifices to stick around and help them out. I had convinced myself that I was kind of a “shield” for my family. That while my siblings were exploring the different facets of life, such as moving to different states (my sister) or settling down to start a family (like my younger brother) I was making the choice to miss out on those things in case they collectively needed me.
There was a point that I realized I COULD have ventured further afield, so to speak, and done more, but I was using my family as an excuse to not stray from my comfort zone. My own fears and insecurities were (and to a certain extent still are) my biggest obstacles that I keep making sacrifices to accommodate. Do I want to change jobs to try and make more money? Yes. Am I comfortable where I’m at because I’m afraid I won’t succeed? Also yes. In that regard, I have convinced myself in part that my sacrifices are that I’m needed where I’m at, which means I don’t grow professionally. Do I want to own a home? Yes, but the market where I live isn’t great for a single income unless you make more money than I do. Are there places I could go that are more affordable? Absolutely, but that means either sacrificing quality or moving out of state (which also means likely finding a new job.) I also happen to have a financially great living situation with my roommates, and it’s hard to part with that even though I’m also making a mental sacrifice to not having my own space to more deeply explore my hobbies, but I also sometimes use the housing market as an excuse to not leave. (I could totally afford to move into an apartment of my own again, but I’m just being picky about once again sharing walls with strangers.)
Life is full of sacrifices, even if they’re driven by fear and insecurities.
The Dragon's Grove 