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“No friendship is an accident.” –O. Henry, Heart of the West
Recently I was telling a friend how grateful I was that she had initiated a get-together.
“No one ever reaches out to me,” I complained. “I feel like I am the one driving all of my relationships.”
“Well,” she responded, “don’t think too highly of me. I almost never reach out…to anyone.”
I mulled this over on my way home that evening. I have often felt like the driving force behind many of my relationships. But I have also felt on many occasions that I’m just as bad at keeping in touch as my friends.
The truth is, many of us are terrible at relationships. We leave our social connections up to chance, only spending time with the people we happen to see during the course of our week.
Sometimes we invite people to spend time with us, but then once they get there we divert half of our attention talking to friends on our phone. Some of us are good at having actual conversations, but not very deep ones—we stick to topics like the weather, the results of the recent sports game in the city, or what’s trending on social media.
We have come to prize friendships of “convenience” above friendships of substance.
It’s become more important to us that we mak…