I have an old friend that I\u2019ve been talking to for almost a decade now, and I enjoy reflecting on the history of our conversations. When we were younger we talked mostly about video games, about lore, music, technology, futurism. One of our favorite things to do when we were teenagers or NSFs was to sit together over iced drinks and cigarettes and geek out together over the future. It would be a glorious one, we agreed, and we were both lucky and eager to witness it.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve gotten older now, and our backs are bent with the stresses and responsibilities of adult life. We both were a little sloppy with our schooling, we both didn\u2019t particularly love our home environments. We both felt like we never really had a great model of masculinity to follow (more on this in the next vomit). And we both, I think, have a weight on our shoulders from our expectations of how we should be as 26 year old men.<\/p>\n
I think I can say that we both feel stretched out, like we weren\u2019t sufficiently prepared for our current challenges, like we need to constantly be digging deeper, pushing harder, making up for lost time, making up for the disengagement of our youth. We have to put in the extra hours to play catch up with peers who seem to be able to get by more easily than we do. (I\u2019ve begun to realize, though, that most people are struggling one way or another; some people are just hiding it. It\u2019s one thing to realize this intellectually, it\u2019s another to actually hear from people telling you outright that they\u2019re facing difficulties, that they aren\u2019t meeting their numbers at work, that they aren\u2019t getting along with their spouse, and so on.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting to pay attention to our conversations with our friends. One thing I\u2019ve always disliked is how friendships can become stale patterns. As an extreme example, imagine a friend from your youth who you enjoyed watching football with. You maybe liked the same teams, or had a rivalry going, and would constantly be discussing the details of those things. You had a lot in common at the time. As the years pass, your paths diverge. You want different things. One of you gets married, one of you stays single. One of you becomes a workaholic, the other takes it easy. You have different values, you have different skeletons in your closet, you have different things that you\u2019re guilty or ashamed about. And you each get really good at hiding those things in your own way, and in polite conversation you never dare or dream of exploring those territories.<\/p>\n
And then you go home and (fictional example) you have too many glasses of whiskey and you feel alone as hell. Because you don\u2019t have anybody to talk to about the things that you care about. There was a line in Fountainhead, I think, where a character says, \u201cIsn\u2019t it infuriating, how your friends care about everything about you except the thing that really matters?\u201d What is it that realy matters? What is it about who we are that makes us real? If we were completely free to be whoever we wanted to be, who would we be?<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019ve come to believe that\u2026 in order to really grow, we need to have uncomfortable conversations with one another. We need to ask probing questions. But these questions have to be with the right spirit, with the right intentions. They have to be genuine. They have to be done with the genuine desire to help the other person grow, and you can\u2019t just force yourself and your own values onto them. You have to help them figure out what their own values are. (And if they aren\u2019t interested, then, well\u2026 I guess your friendship can never develop past a certain point.)<\/p>\n
Someone else once said something like, your life is a function of the uncomfortable conversations you\u2019re willing to have. Tim Ferriss said that \u2013 assuming that you live in the modern world with access to basic human needs and resources and so on, your success in life can probably be determined by the number of uncomfortable conversations you\u2019re willing to have. Most importantly with yourself. And I think an uncomfortable truth that I should prsonally acknowledge is that there are definitely things that I still avoid. Why do I avoid them? I suppose I worry about being judged. I worry about implicating other people, about hurting or offending others that I care about. So maybe some of these things will be things that I have to write in private, and something about me is weirdly averse to that.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ve definitely learned that it\u2019s better to try and write something out for yourself internally than to try and hide it, avoid it, work on it internally, blah blah blah. When there\u2019s an elephant in the room, introduce it \u2013 at least to yourself. Don\u2019t live in fear. Don\u2019t hide from life. The result is a small, puny life where you\u2019re holding your breath. Don\u2019t hold your breath. Take a deep breath and dive right in. You\u2019re going to die eventually. C\u2019mon.<\/p>\n
The original title of this post was to be \u201cpeople hide the things that need discussing the most\u201d. I have this habit of starting with \u201cpeople\u201d when I really mean me. I use other people as a proxy to avoid talking about myself, but really, we see the world as we are. So the question I should be asking myself is, what is the thing that I need to discuss that I\u2019m not discussing?<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
[1] I would be some sort of roving writer person, commentating on this and that and everything, maybe. And maybe building worlds (I don\u2019t think I\u2019d put THAT much effort into this\u2026 I\u2019d probably be happy to borrow the ideas of others) and writing characters (again I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d force this)\u2026 what do I want to do as a storyteller? I find myself thinking \u201cI should analyze everything I love\u201d, so maybe I\u2019d spend about a month doing that, but once that\u2019s done I\u2019d start making my own things. It feels like I\u2019m a long way away from making my own things.<\/p>\n
Well let\u2019s use a cooking analogy. Before I can cook something that\u2019s my own recipe, I need to try and learn the language. I need to follow at least the basic recipes of others, see what works and what doesn\u2019t, try and fail. And then after that I can start improvising, swapping things out. Everything is a Remix, Visa. Don\u2019t try to be so original. Just start with things you like and change out the bits that you don\u2019t like and then see where that takes you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have an old friend that I\u2019ve been talking to for almost a decade now, and I enjoy reflecting on the history of our conversations. When we were younger we talked mostly about video games, about lore, music, technology, futurism. One of our favorite things to do when we were… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[334,368,359],"class_list":["post-10254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-peopling","tag-progress","tag-troubleshooting"],"yoast_head":"\n