Over dinner last night, a couple of close friends and I discussed the consequences of getting to know people — getting to know more people, specifically. We were “philosophizing,” as my wife puts it, which usually entails profound aphorisms like, “There are those who want to make things better, and there are those who want to make things better for themselves. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.” (I’ll sheepishly raise my hand to take credit/blame for that one.)
But our propensity to solve the world’s problems over a bottle of wine was a comfort to my friend. “See, this is why I don’t have any reason to keep making more friends,” my buddy said. “I’m not going to have better conversations with other people.”
I wondered about the sentiment behind the words: The notion that, at some stage in our lives, we would do better to focus on the depth of a few relationships, rather than seek out new friendships that may or may not pan out. Quality over quantity, let’s say.
The idea is grounded in Dunbar’s number, which essentially states that our brains limit us to social groups no larger than 150 people. This contradicts the notion that, through social media, we can maintain relationships with thousands of people, even if they consist of nothing more than knowing what we’re all eating for breakfast.
Then today, I saw this commercial while absentmindedly watching one of those shows where a lot of people make faces at each other, then go out and work for 20 minutes and make a gazillion dollars.
While I tend to agree with the YouTube comment that puts it eloquently, “I like this commercial but lol @ baby boomers being anything other than the generation that ruined America,” I thought there was a lot of truth in the central idea of the commercial. There isn’t much substance in many of our “networked” relationships. I might know from Facebook that my friend’s dad had just sold 50 pounds of honey in three days as a newly minted apiarist. But I wouldn’t know how much that meant to a man who had bounced from one job to the next, if I hadn’t heard my friend tell it to me over steak and asparagus.
Don’t get me wrong: there is value in getting to know more and different people as we go through life. Earlier in the week, another friend mentioned he was intentionally getting to know people outside of politics, in an attempt to keep from continually revisiting the same topics, stresses and gossip that crop up within such circles. I try to do the same, but in those moments I find myself revisiting friendships forged first in middle school (mainly because I know that I can’t possibly be more awkward than when we first met). Those are wells I can draw from every now and then, because we drilled them a long time ago. They are deep, even if the water might taste a little musty (it’s the nostalgia).
I just wonder if we might be a little better off if we stopped making so many “friends,” and instead focused on making a few of those friendships better. It might not lead to as many party invitations, but we also wouldn’t have to worry about making as many excuses.
