I was listening to an episode about friendship on the Wild Crazy Meaningful Life! podcast, and it made me think of a type of connection that, I feel, often gets overlooked: the fleeting friendship.
We seem to have this idealized version of relationships that places long-standing friendships on a pedestal (even if they’re long-standing friendships based on long-standing dysfunction–“Who cares if we’re miserable! We’ve been friends since fifth grade!”).
But what about the connections that last a few months…or a few minutes?
I believe that it’s possible to connect with another person, deeply, in a short amount of time. It doesn’t happen with every person you meet, but it does happen. And when we define friendships by their duration, we’re missing out on all of the rich connections we are blessed with on a regular basis.
Last fall, I was out hiking when I came upon two playful little minks, splashing around in a stream doing cute mink stuff. I was totally mesmerized, and I felt as if I’d been granted a special backstage pass to Minks, Unplugged: fishing, underwater somersaults, munching on fish. Oh. My. Goddess.
Running to the grocery store after my hike, I was still buzzing with excitement over these minks, and I couldn’t keep from sharing it with the clerk at checkout. She, in turn, enthusiastically shared a nature story of her own, and we entered, for a sum total of five minutes, a bubble of mutual excitement over our love of nature.
Will I be calling her the next time I’m in a funk and need support? No. I don’t even know her name. But in my mind (or more importantly, my heart), that doesn’t lessen the connection we shared during our five minutes of nature gushing.
There’s something magical about opening up to another human being, authentically expressing who you are in the present moment and witnessing who they are, without expectations, without the need to “legitimize” the connection by extending it with a “Hey, look me up on Facebook” or “We should totally get together sometime!”
How many times have you uttered those words, already feeling the pressure and uneasy dread creeping into the present moment? There’s a part of you that knows, deep down, that you’re taking a beautiful, ephemeral thing and trying to mash it into a mold of permanence.
Of course, that being said, there will be times when your intuition leads you to keep a good thing going, and that’s totally cool, too. The point is, there isn’t some unwritten rule that says you have to. So you can tell those taunting inner bullies of childhood, nagging you with, “If you like her so much, why don’t you marry her?” to take a hike. (And I’ve got a great trail to recommend if they wanna see some minks.)
Similarly, this idealized view of friendship puts a lot of pressure on us to stay FRIENDS FOREVER. And as I’ve written about before, sometimes you’ve just gotta say goodbye to friends (and uncomfortable shorts).
As Pace and Kylie mentioned in their podcast, we don’t really have socially acceptable ways to break up with a friend, and so we often let the friendship die the slow death of awkwardness as we keep making excuses to avoid getting together, or the pained, nothing-left-to-say conversations become fewer and farther between.
I think we all have these two things tucked away in our subconscious: 1) the fact that friends are supposed to be friends forever, and 2) there isn’t a graceful way to exit a friendship that’s past its expiration date.
These false beliefs generate fear, a fear of making connections in the first place, because, oh my god, if we end up not really liking this person, how will we ever get rid of them? Better to keep our distance than risk an awkward situation.
But what if, instead, we stepped into a more expansive range of possibilities?
What if we gave ourselves permission to be in relationships that feel healthy…and let go of ones that don’t?
What if we accepted that change is a given and nothing is permanent, including friendship?
What if we allowed connections to happen spontaneously and remain in the moment, rather than wondering where it’s all heading?
Introducing flexibility into areas that have felt very rigid and controlled in my life has been one of the most difficult and rewarding things I’ve ever done, and it has been extremely powerful in the area of friendships.
When I give myself permission to spend time with people who light me up and say “no” to plans with people who leave me drained, I:
- feel more satisfied in my relationships, because I’m showing up out of genuine desire, not resentful obligation.
- respect other people who are taking care of themselves by saying “no” to my invites without needing to take it personally.
And on a more granular level, even within a healthy friendship there are plenty of opportunities to flex your boundaries. Maybe you adore your friend but you don’t adore going out to bars, which your friend loves. Most of us have been taught to look at this as an either-or situation: either you suck it up and go out to bars or you stop hanging out with this person.
You might even see that you’re convincing yourself of your limited choices in the way you talk about the situation: “I hate that I can’t hang out with Corinne anymore, because she always wants to hang out at bars!”
Wait, who says you can’t hang out with Corinne anymore?
What if you talked to Corinne and let her know how you feel, emphasizing how much you love her and how much you’d like to find other things to do together (having some fun suggestions at the ready can help, too). And making your expectations clear, that Corinne totally doesn’t have to stop bar hopping, she’ll just need to find other peeps to accompany her on her late-night adventures, can take a lot of pressure off of the situation as well.
When we give ourselves the freedom to choose, our soul extends that invitation to everyone around us.
How liberating would it be to live in a world where we show up because we want to, we say “no” when we need to, and we savor connections with our fellow humans, whether it be for five minutes or five decades.