That being said on the ferry ride from Lombok last night I had some thoughts about the difference in connection/friendship while traveling. It is quite different from something that can be long term due to proximity for great amounts of time. To elaborate; I met some very interesting, outgoing, fascinated people in my time on the Gilis. As I had mentioned before, Trevor and I stayed with Bart. A Dutchman doing it up right before devoting his immediate, and probably distant future to off-shore engineering. A cool profession no doubt, and one he is excited to experience. We met Matthew. A serial traveler from French-Canadia. 3 Swedish girls
; Maria, Martina and Beatrice. Ski instructors in the Alps... All of these people were great to hang out with. Far from boring. Could easily see myself becoming really close friends with any of them. Except... all of our plans, our geographic locations, times in our lives are so widely disparate. What does that mean about forging a connection of friendship with someone you know is going to be gone in a very observable amount of time?Living in South Korea where the ex-pat turnover is quite high I have had to try to understand this already. There are a variety of schools of thought on the subject. I have a friend that won't worry about you if he knows you plan on being in Korea for a year or less. This may sound offensive, but far from it. On many levels it is quite practical. You cannot devote tremendous energy to forging a relationship withs someone who is self-professed to be transient. He's not gonna throw you under the bus or ignore you either. Just not going to make a terrible effort to become close to you. For myself, I suppose I am willing to devote my time to someone under the rather naive and romantic notion that I can keep up with people. Stay connected to them. No doubt with the power of communication that is at our disposal that becomes increasingly possible, but how strong is such a connection? I am probably fooling myself that all those people that move through my life are people I will ever see again or even really want to see again. Perhaps it will be the 10% rule that my father loves so much. If I can remain connected to 10% of those people my life will be richer. And in the long run that seems to make sense. I can conceivably make the effort to visit that ONE friend from Australia or Argentina that really stuck out and allow those others, while intense the relationship might have been at the time, to fade nicely into memory. A place where I can say "who was that guy who used to always do ___ when he was drunk?" and then spend the next 15 minutes reminiscing about some other tangential thing.
Will I see these people again? Possibly not. That also depends on their willingness. Matthew is probably moving to Korea so he is likely. I like Amsterdam so Bart perhaps. What of other people? Who knows. But at this moment maybe I'd rather just fool myself into believing that these connections were life lasting... And interestingly, as Bart and I discussed, with things like facebook** (how long until online social networking becomes a graduate school concentration?) there is less need to even remain in close contact with people. They are part of your vast social network. A person you can relegate to your database of places and people and if you ever find yourself in Anchorage or Vladivostok you can be sure that someone will be there to look up.
I am off to plan some bribe packages for my trip to Sulawesi. Never know when a small billfold of Lincolns and a bottle of Arak may come in handy in the hinterlands of Indonesia...
** speaking of facebook most of my pictures are there. If you are not friends with me or don't use facebook let me know and I will provide a link for you to view them.
2 comments:
Bob Stiehler, whom you might remember was a teacher at Kingswood-Oxford, had a three year rule: he did not bother to invest a lot of energy getting to know new faculty until they returned for their third year.
I wonder,too, if Facebook might not eventually become most useful as an electronic Christmas card list.
I've had the same conversation with my roomate in Paris. She found it strange that some people treated friendship like an investment or obligation that required a certain return over time. In that case facebook serves as a useful tool to track an ever diversifying portfolio of buddy stocks where the number of friends you have translates into some vague sense of self value. Throw those babies on a stock chart and you've got a popularity bubble waiting to burst.
I'll agree with you z that choosing to become friends with someone based on the practicality of it is simply absurd. How do you put a value on when two individuals with candlelight glowing off their faces are laughing to their hearts content under a starry Paris night. Moments like that are the only true possessions we will take away from this world. But the harder you try to cling onto them, regardless of how small the percentage, the faster they will slip away from your fingers.
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