Taking Interest in the Day to Day
Lately I have been thinking about the oddities of friendship as friends part ways. It is rather interesting to me. I come from an interesting perspective having attended three high schools, and now being home from school waiting to leave again for two years (well it is interesting to me anyway but hey, its my life - I'm supposed to be interested). The friends that I was so devastated to leave in Kirkland, Reno, Sammamish, and even Provo are pretty much meaningless to me. I had thought that these friendships would stand the test of time and when circumstance permitted it would be like old times. Not the case.
I ran into an old friend from Kirkland on campus a few times. This was someone who I was very close to - a best friend perhaps. However, I didn't even take the time to find out where this person lived though the walk was short. We were even in one of those giant freshmen lecture classes with hundreds of students crammed into an auditorium. And we never got passed "hi." And I don't really care. Thats the point.
You see, you don't just go back to being friends. You move on. You let go. And time makes it okay. I was very depressed to leave Monticello. Now I couldn't care less. I've let go. But there are some exceptions and this perplexes me. Why do some people still matter to me? Why can my best friend from Kirkland mean nothing to me while other random people, people I was never really all that close to, still matter?
So then a few days back I talked to Keiko, my most favorite roommate's girlfriend (I think). They've been writing each other faithfully every week for the past little bit while he has been out. Dana and Brad have also been writing every week. It occurred to me to wonder what the heck they write to each other because when ever I've tried to write, or even email people I've not seen in a long it turns out awkward at best and I quickly run out of things to say. Do I put in just the big events as I recap my life for the past month or year or longer? What constitutes a "big event" that is big enough to include in this letter or email? What "big events" do these weekly pen pals include?
Then it hit me. Now most of you all reading this are probably thinking "Jeff is an idiot" for not seeing this before but this was news to me. These people don't put the big events in those letters. They write about day to day stuff. They write about the test they took on Thursday. The lecture on Tuesday. The pointless thing you did Wednesday and the everyday ordinary weekend plans for Saturday.
Think about it. Those best friends, when they were your best friends, knew every little event in your life often because they were involved with those events themselves. Then you part ways and suddenly it takes effort to even keep track of those day to day events. When I think of those precious few exceptions to this I realize that while I wasn't the best friend in the world I knew more or less what was happening in their lives. The others? Well suddenly a little time flies by and I'm trying to decide what constitutes a "big event" when in fact a big event is nothing more then a series of day to day events that only your real friends know about anyway.
Now this idea of taking interest in the day to day not only fills your letters in my mind but also lets you get to know a person better. You get to see how a person reacts to day to day life. You get to see what they think of life. And you can include your true thoughts because you've gotten past the point of summerizing your life in a few short sentences.
So what is the point of all this meaningless chatter? I don't know. Just some random thoughts that have been tossed around my head. I guess it all means that if I want to keep the same friends over the next two years I'm going to have to learn to write better letters. I think that I'm going to place new meaning in the question "how was your day?" And I'm going to have to take a deep interest in the menial, day to day events of everyday life.