Not Today, My Good Man
This past week I've been putting a lot more focus into reaching out and becoming a more social person. Making friends in New York is never an easy task. Meeting like minded people is a skill and usually a lot of luck mixed together.
I've read about it like how Dale Carnegie explains it in "How to Win Friends and Influence People", but even psychopaths game the system with that book. I guess what I am thinking through this morning is why it's important, less what do I get out of the connections between people, and more how it's great to have folks to bounce ideas around with, have a chance to take a step back from the wider world, and remember that it's more important to exist as a part of a community than outside of it.
Every once in a while I think I want to be a politician, or someone who "matters" to a lot of people. That thought escapes faster than I have time to sit with a lot of the time. That's the indicator that it's the wrong idea in the first place. I don't want to have to wear a persona in order to get ideas across to people. Many great politicians don't have to, and the worst ones are usually also very representative of that too.
At the end of the day, what brings the socialite out of me is the need to do the opposite of that. I want people who I can be myself around, not have to code switch into professional mode, dedicate myself to like a long term relationship, just exist.
That I think is the most fun part of forging new relationships with people you don't know, this quote from Seneca talking about how his fellow philosopher saw it, rings particularly true.
"The philosopher Attalus used to say that it is more pleasant to make a friend than to have a friend, “just as it is more pleasurable for an artist to paint a picture than to have painted one." — Seneca, Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (64)
I guess that's what draws me back to his letters in the first place. That connection is the essence of who he is writing to, and seems to me a real reason he's even bothering to write. The fun of it.
It's a consistent feeling for me, but certainly not an unhealthy one. Many advantages to respect with having it too. The problem for me has always been staying true to the fact I have options in how to approach it, and expand not only my friend circles but visit smarter people than myself.
Right now the most important bit is how do I keep that feeling in the center of my goals. I think I have a few ways to approach it: I can call an old friend just to chat, meet up with a new one to just play some cards. See what opportunities unfold from doing that, and roll with it.
Overall I'm feeling like the immortal words of Wayne's World when I have the choice to either quit the attempt, or correctly stomp forward. When my brain wants to lay down and quit it, I'll remind it.
"Not today good man, I'm feeling saucy." — Wayne's World (1992)
