An article I once read claimed that most Americans are two paychecks away from bankruptcy. In other words, if the typical American missed two paychecks, they would be scraping the bottom of the piggy bank. Recently I was thinking of this, and it occurred to me that this could be true of people’s social lives as well as their financial lives. If you took the average person and uprooted them from their social life for just a couple of months, how much of it would be left when you put them back? It’s not that people forget about their friends at the drop of a hat; just that a whole lot of day-to-day socializing is spontaneous and arises naturally out of seeing people. In a culture such as ours, where there are only a very few chances to be around people, falling out of the loop is frighteningly easy.
It’s easy to complain about the mechanics of our culture, but to me the reasonable response is to become confident in one’s ability to rebuild either of these parts of life. If you know you can find yourself a decent source of income at any time if it’s suddenly necessary, you never need to be anxious about work or finances. Likewise, if you know you can find people you like whenever you want to, there’s never any need to be stressed about the volatility of casual friendships. At the same time, you can accumulate savings (so as to be financially self-sufficient) and build lasting friendships that don’t depend on where you are or what you are doing.
2 Comments until now
This is good stuff, Michael.
I’d recently read that financial statistic as well and it’s interesting to think about the application to the social.
As life goes on you realize some friends were more based on circumstance and some on deeper connections, but those connections can change over time too, as we change as people.
I also remember hearing once that the Japanese culture at one point in time believed that if you hadn’t seen someone in three days, you could no longer consider that you really “knew” who they were, or what they were about anymore…
Hi Jay!
That’s a fascinating bit of history about Japanese culture. I sometimes feel that way myself, although I think there’s something to be said for more “occasional” friendships too; and it’s much easier to reconnect with someone you already know, however rarely you see that person.
I definitely see more and more of that fluidity of personal connections as time goes on.
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