Chia-ying says I have too many friends. My taiwanese friend from graduate school in New York complained that she never felt like she could get to know me because my social circle was too wide. She said this to me some weeks ago in Taiwan but her words have stuck with me.
Chia-ying might be surprised to hear another story from my time at a summer language program in Beijing some five years ago. I used to spend everyday with my roommate Stuart and almost every meal at Korean restaurant on the northern side of the Beijing Normal University campus where I first discovered Bibimbap. I spent hours a day making and studying little paper vocabulary flashcards and when I needed a break I would ride my bicycle around the back streets of Beijing. A Chinese-American classmate, who I called Da-lin and had a crush on at the time joined me for lunch at my favorite little restaurant one day. While I was loudly slurping some noodles she suddenly put her chopsticks down and broke (for the first time that I had seen) the vow that we all signed that summer promising to speak nothing but Chinese for ten weeks. She said, “Lin Shudao, you are asocial, aren’t you?” Without waiting for my answer, she continued eating and our discussion resumed in Chinese…
I think she was right, by any definition of the word. I spent little or no time with other students in the program. Here in Japan, my friend Lars has essentially accused me of the same, claiming that I rarely emerge from my cottage to “go out” with friends, resembling a hermit if anything else.
Yet if you ask my Danish friend Jens here what I’m doing and he’ll claim that I’m always off meeting yet another friend in Ginza, or Shinjuku or Shibuya, as if I was some high-spending social butterfly.
In New York, I spent almost all my time with Sayaka and Jai (Sayaka was worried the amount of time I spent with Jai was revealing some kind of bisexual tendencies, which I have ever since tried to convince her is unfounded). And yet Chia-ying and other friends believed that I was all over the place.
In thinking about Chia-ying’s memorable words, and Da-lin’s before that, I tried to explain the seeming contradiction by saying, “I just don’t settle well into groups of friends, but prefer to develop strong friendships with people one-on-one, without ‘inheriting’ their whole social network.” Yes, I liked that one. It gives me that individualist, rugged traveler and leader type of image.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work….
In high school I had a variety of friends, to be sure, but I fit very nicely into the geeks/nerds/role-players group as well as the thespians/literary buffs group and can’t really claim to have only picked one or two in each. Studying in Yokohama, I had a tight group of friends from IUC. We were a weird group of friends but spent many of our activities together, including lunch hours.
Another generalization, or principle, that I have invented to describe myself is equally flawed. I would often say that having moved around a lot in my life and being a “global nomad” or “third culture kid” (TCK) etc. means that I don’t have time to develop strong close-knit social networks over a long time and instead love to plunge deeply when I get to know a new person. I don’t have time to waste on chit chat and always start by asking all sorts of rude and straight forward questions. I ask about people’s emotions and whether or not they are happy in life before talking about the weather or today’s news. I must admit, however, this isn’t really true. I have dozens of superficial encounters all the time with people I meet.
So instead of announcing some new updated theory that can answer both Chia-ying and Da-lin, I should come to terms with the fact that I don’t, in fact, really understand myself, or the patterns in my social interactions.
One of the things that reminded me of this issue was a recent evening spent with Tony Laszlo, who runs ISSHO, a project I have much respect for. Tony has a great vision for his project and has the personality and vast knowledge that befits someone with his goals. In discussing ways of improving ISSHO, I saw that he is struggling with many of the issues that I will struggle in my future efforts to get ChinaJapan.org off the ground. Building a community, encouraging active support for that community, and developing a network of people who are interested etc. is something that all these sorts of projects are struggling with. I felt guilty that I have not written anything for or done much with ISSHO at all. The thing is, there are dozens of projects and communities that I wish I was more active in.
However, on my way home, I realized that not only can I not be active in all of them, or give all of my academic, programming, and other interests as much time as I would like, this problem is essentially the same as my contradictory social tendencies.
We all send email, make phone calls, and interact with the people we care about. As most of my friends know, I can go weeks at a time without responding to email only to go through spurts where I reply within minutes or hours. I can also go years without contact only to become very close to someone again. My “involvement” with people is just as sporadic and marked by trends as any of my other life’s “projects”.
The only thing I’m certain of is that a look at my behavior cannot reveal anything qualitatively about my feelings towards a given person or project. I believe this is an important observation, albeit somewhat disturbing. I honestly believe that I’m as fascinated by history as I am by my technology projects, as passionate about hiking or biking in the countryside as I am about watching movies or reading books. I am absolutely puzzled by, though remain respectful of, the many people I have met whose entire lives are defined by a single hobby or passion.
I now realize that this goes for people as well as interests. I am absolutely puzzled by, though remain respectful of, the many people I have met whose entire lives are surrounded by a small group of individuals.
I develop strong and meaningful relationships with people around me, like everyone. However, some of them might be shocked to hear what I say next: I believe there is a strong element of the arbitrary in the formation of these relationships. I don’t believe that, “It is hard to find good honest friends we can trust who care about the things I care about,” or that this should be a marker by which to form friendships. On the contrary, I believe that “There are a hell of a lot of good honest people out there who lead fascinating lives and have learned fascinating things but many of which who have personalities much at odds with my own.” When such people happen to cross my path, and if a hand full of other variables happen to match, a great friendship can develop. Even if it doesn’t, a short but meaningful encounter with someone or a long and interesting conversation can broaden our minds and disturb the assumptions and expectations about people that develop from our limited contacts.
I suspect that the things which help determine whether such interactions develop into stronger friendships, and forgive me for sounding cold and realist in this regard, probably include more mundane factors like geographical proximity, standard of living (class), education, and favored means of socialization.