clover

I know how rare four leaf clovers are. The last time I found one, it took me a whole summer of playing outfield in peewee baseball during the 5th grade. Sometimes, something that can feel just as difficult to find is human connection.

The older I’ve gotten, the more time I’ve had to spend with myself. Sometimes, it’s a reflexive choice where I subconsciously decide that I would rather go home than stay out late for drinks. But then I get home and find myself twiddling my thumbs on the couch wishing I could summon forth a meaningful conversation with someone. Especially in medical school, I end up spending a lot of time alone because I’m studying and tend to isolate myself when I’m stressed.

This past week, I felt three moments of connection that I wanted to appreciate in writing. Granted, my 25 years of life have been full of moments of connection, but in light of how connection starved my recent life has been, these memories shone like gold.

A new acquaintance of mine invited me to a small kickback they were having. My initial reaction, as always, was hesitance. However, something my best friend told me once was that “the first invitation is the most important invitation”. Having been the person on the other end of the invitation, I agree with this statement. When someone turns you down the first time, it’s sets a figurative default switch to not invite them the next time. So, despite being drained from an exam earlier in the day, I chose to grab a few beers and head over to “at least say hello to be polite”. But to my surprise, I ended up spending the whole night playing board games and making new connections that filled me with life force. It reminded me of the joy of overcoming hesitance to be rewarded with the exciting experience of making new friends. As much as I enjoy the security of an established friend group, I also appreciate the feeling of unknown potential friendships when starting a new school, club, or activity. It’s also worth mentioning, so much of our lives are spent pursuing relationships with people such that the dynamic we often find ourselves in is as a desirer. To be invited to something is to be sought out and to be desired - and that’s not something to take for granted. It’s toxic to feel that people are less valuable when they are more available and actively making an effort to get to know you. We should feel honored that someone would want to get to know us better, and it is a privilege to be in the position to reciprocate those efforts.

The second moment for me was showing up to host a painting event for a school club during lunchtime. Similar to the first memory, I didn’t want to show up. The first thought I always have in these situations is “how much would I really miss anyways?”. Even so, I made the effort to be there and was immensely surprised by the turnout. I met so many of my classmates who I enjoyed being around but never had the time or proximity to get to know on a deeper level. Though there were no intense 1 on 1 interactions, floating around, chatting, and joking with lots of different people I liked and felt safe with was a fulfilling feeling in its own right. How comfortable I felt, in conjunction with being a club officer, gave me the confidence to approach a lot of new people as well. Regardless of how others may perceive me, I’ve always felt a certain level of anxiety about approaching new people. More than anything, this experience made me feel that I really wanted to be a part of organizing and participating in community building activities in my future life. I wasted a lot of time in my younger years looking for the people that were “cool enough” or “deep enough”, and I always weighed the superficial value of people before I chose to associate with them. I realize now how short-minded that was, and how much privilege I had to even feel that way. The perfect friend group will always be out there in the world of fantasy, but the people we can get to know will always be right in front of us.

The last moment I wanted to write about actually just transpired a few minutes ago. A friend who I met through photography, namely instagram, reached out about stopping by to do a photoshoot. In contrast to the theme of my previous paragraph, we talked about friendships made out of proximity versus out of a shared heart language. While I still stand by making the most of the people in our present lives, I also think it’s important to strive for friendships that satisfy all the different selves we have - especially those that speak the same heart language as us. I think the wisest way to navigate relationships is to find a balance between the crowd and the individuals in that crowd. It’s strange to me how I felt more conversational flow with this friend than with people I’ve lived with for years. Sometimes, there is an innate friendship chemistry that is difficult to reproduce with time and effort. I don’t have many other friendships like this one - a complete stranger met through happenstance who I’d now be willing to keep a part of my foreseeable future. Most friends I have are from a school, summer experience, job, or club but to truly make a great friend “out in the wild” is a beautiful feeling.

Broad and narrow, shallow and deep, I think that every form of human connection exists to satisfy different parts of our need to know and feel known by others. I’ve been neglecting this desire within myself for the past while, but I can feel it speaking its own truth regardless of my efforts to keep my head down and do my own thing. Relationships with people have always been a natural consequence of new places but never due to conscious effort. As I am entering the next chapter of adulthood where people are naturally more and more closed off to strangers, I realize the only way to make sure I feel happy with the connections in my life is to give them due diligence in the same way I work to maintain other aspects of my life.