Pay attention to the people you’re drawn to, then surround yourself with them
Most of the people we are exposed to in our first 22 years of life we meet because of circumstance. Perhaps we grew up in the same neighbourhood, went to the same school, did extracurriculars together or ended up at the same internship. Of course, there are anomalies to this rule – people we meet outside of circumstance that lodge themselves into our lives long-term – as well as anomalous people who break out of circumstance-based environments early and surrounded themselves with an entirely novel set of people.
For most of us though, circumstantial friends are all that we know.
If you’re lucky, some of the friends you met through circumstance will have much more overlap with you than just what brought you together. Perhaps you share hobbies, interests, cultures, passions, curiosities, etc. These are likely the ones you’ll notice yourself sticking close to after the circumstances that brought you together have dissolved.
Once you enter adulthood and much of the highly structured part of your life is behind you (you’re in the “real world”), you might begin to notice that the vibrant, bustling hubs of friends that once kept you feeling warm socially might not be as centralized - as together. People begin to move on, and your friends start to diverge.
This phenomenon can spark a sudden feeling of social disconnection. This could, of course, happen at any phase of life, but tends to really spike after one of your core structures erupts (moving away, graduating, etc). Instead of viewing this as a negative event that leaves you feeling more alone, I think it’s worth viewing it as an opportunity.
An opportunity to make friends beyond circumstance.
Friends beyond circumstance
After I graduated and was left with essentially no way to form circumstantial connections due to the pandemic, I began to think about other ways I could connect with people.
To do this though, I needed to first think about the kind of people i wanted to surround myself with. It wasn’t going to be my environment that I could harness to create new connections, so it had to be something else…
I decided a good place to start would be my interests.
I took an online writing course this past year called Write of Passage, all about how to write online (clearly a potent interest of mine!)
I had never met anyone else, circumstantially, that shared an interest in writing the way that I did. There was no one I could really talk about it with. No one to ask questions to, discuss the challenges of it with, or why I even felt compelled to do it in the first place. No one, that is, until I took this course.
Upon enrolling in and completing the 6-week course, I stumbled into literally hundreds of people that cared about learning how to write online. While it might sound obvious that this is what I’d find, it was still astounding to me.
To my pleasant surprise, I had way more in common with these individuals than I expected.
The more I got to know these people, the more I realized it wasn’t just an interest in writing that we shared, but the values that made us interested in writing, which went much deeper. It was a shared interest in continuous learning, sharing, and engaging with the world around us. The more I chatted with them, the more overlap I discovered. We listened to the same podcasts, read the same books, had the same role models, and strived for many of the same goals.
Ultimately, I had so much to talk about with these people that long after the course had ended and the circumstances to prop up our connection had disappeared, these friendships persisted. These new connections stimulated me in a way that was entirely different from many of my other friendships. This isn’t to say that one is better than the other (we definitely need a healthy combination of friends we are close to and enjoy spending time with locally/circumstantially, as well as finding our “tribe” that shares our interests, values, and the motivating forces that fill a large part of our lives outside of circumstance).
These are the people that you’ll be able to share the things that make your eyes flicker with excitement. Whether that’s music, your favourite books, rock climbing, running, technology, or whatever else you’re interested in.
Forming connections that create a sense of belonging that transcends circumstance is like walking into an entirely new universe – and the best place to find them is, you guessed it, the internet.
Whether it’s an online writing course, a facebook group for climbing, a pottery class you find on google, a school club, or whatever else.
Try it. Engage with the people there. Ask them questions. Share how you got interested in whatever it is that you have in common, and stay in touch with them. Ping them when you have questions or are feeling isolated in that bubble of your life that no one around you quite understands.
Look beyond circumstance to find friends you can engage with in areas of your life that are unique to you.
These people can nourish and stimulate you in completely novel ways.
Build your own interest-based bubble
Pay attention to your interests, and the people that share them. Put yourself in scenarios where you can meet them, or reach out and connect with them online.
Then surround yourself with them in your life; whether that be meeting up in person or staying in touch on the internet, forming friendships founded on mutual interests can expand our lives in ways we can only understand once these people start to fill them up!
Give it a go.
Reach out to someone who you think shares something unique or unusual with you. See where it goes. Do it again. Build out your interest-based bubble, and watch your world expand.