Making friends

Having friends is hard. Maintaining friendships requires work and is not always fun but friendships are worth it. Any relationship from just an acquaintance to friend and many others require effort. It is understandable but I believe it is wrong to believe that just existing strong relationship"s will form. The world is so alienating that forming a community has to be a very active choice. It requires labour to make friends as it is so easy to avoid making connections. It requires work and time to deepen those relationships into closer friendships. And it requires work to maintain those relationships. All this can be draining but it is worth it.

Relationships make communities and communities are how we survive this world. It is by others that we can really be. I think we can’t wait for leaders or even view delegation to others to lead us as good but must all take roles in trying to help lead and be willing to give some control to others. Leadership is not just taking command as it is seen by too many men but can be facilitating community. Planning and reaching out and being a node in a network.

I know how hard it is because I know I struggle with making friends. It can be scary because it makes me vulnerable to others’ judgments and requires work. I wish I was not so bad at it and less lazy but I think acknowledging that it is hard is important. There are others challenges such as those from men. Men often take the openness to friendship as an invitation to make romantic/sexual advances which is not welcome. People will so often take advantage of the vulnerability that is in relationships with others so in order to feel safe, erecting barriers is understandable. Thickening the membrane between oneself and others risks cutting oneself off from so much of what a person is.

The space between each other is growing ever larger with capitalism. The space between people is being filled with the effects of capitalism and the longer this goes on the harder it is to be a person. This is both making it harder to do the joys of being a person and slowly killing everyone. This effect is making it harder to form friendships with other people now. When I want to connect to others I feel this viscous fluid making it harder. All the drudgery of capitalism from constant evaluation and commodification of everything. It feels like wading through a river of molasses.