“Remember those who understood you before you even started explaining.  Those are your people,” unknown.  I heard someone mention that they became friends with someone really quickly because she didn’t have to tell the other person how to be her friend.  I’m not disparaging quick connections—I’ve had them myself—but the latter point bothered me because it insinuates we need to bend and become something else to befriend someone.  Like we need lessons to be their friend.  In my mind that differs greatly from being understood before explaining.  When we understand without explanation, it’s the shared knowledge/empathy/experience that connects us because we’ve been there.  Make no mistake, those experiences tend to bond us but I don’t pretend that all of those people are my people either.  Like, we may have a shared experience of going to the museum or to an amusement park but that circumstance doesn’t mean we understand each other—sure we know what it means to go on the same ride, but that doesn’t mean we know the person.  So there is a fine line in connection and it comes down to truly knowing ourselves.  And there is also a difference between explanation and justification. I might need to give you detail on how we got where we are but I don’t need to prove I had a right or a reason to be there.

I worry a lot today, especially when I see the relationships my son is forming with people as he gets older.  There truly seems to be this near delusional expectation that feelings are everything.  It’s confusing because these kids are told it’s ok that they failed and made mistakes yet we still determine where they go next based on those grades.  I bring this up because we’ve set the stage for the belief that if people don’t behave exactly as we need them to, then they are somehow bad.  The fact that we expect people to bend to us at all is ridiculous—there are 8 billion people in the world, we can’t behave in 8 billion ways to make them all happy.  The truth is this: we ALL seek to be understood.  We all seek acceptance—we’re social creatures and want to be part of the crowd.  The people who understand our actions and accept who we are while helping us become better, those are our people.  Anyone who demands you become something else in their presence is not.  Those who demonstrate understanding know the range and depths of what we’ve been through and know how to help us navigate through it.  Anyone who demands justification or proof that we’re a friend is someone who will make us jump through hoops at their discretion. 

The world is hard enough to navigate these days.  It’s hard to discern fact from fiction and it’s even harder to tell what’s even REAL.  Not just the truth but what actually even exists.  We’ve created a world of illusion whether it’s presenting a specific façade to others or outright creating something not real (AI generated experiences perhaps…this isn’t to knock AI, in fact it’s to commend it because it’s real enough that we need to question it).  We need each other more than ever and we need genuine connection more than ever.  Those relationships help ground us and guide us and they remind us that we aren’t alone.  Anyone who makes us “earn” the right to be in their presence isn’t a true friend and truly isn’t worth our time.  We can say thanks for the lesson and move on—we don’t need to add fake friends to the list of fake things in this world. And just remember that the gut doesn’t lie.  If we know someone isn’t genuine or that the don’t have our best interests at heart, we need to trust it.  Understanding comes with time and patience and experience, not with someone else’s demands.  So take a look at the people in our inner circles and ask what their connection is.  Is it conditional?  Or is it genuine?  We know the answer and we know the tribe that calls to us. Don’t lose them.