I was talking with a friend yesterday who was feeling incredibly saddened by a recent shift in his friendships. A tightly-knit group had “split,” so to speak, into three tightly-knit people with the other two on the periphery. He said, “I feel like there’s something wrong with me–what did I do to not make them want to be as close with me anymore?” I was struck by how similar his thought process was to mine (instantly jumping to the conclusions that it’s something wrong with YOU, not remembering that there are two people in a relationship so the issue could very well lie with the other person).
He then followed up by talking about how these other three write on each other’s Facebook walls all the time, about their inside jokes and plans, and how he feels very much an outsider when watching all of this without being a part of it. That REALLY made me think, because his comments sounded very much like those of the middle-schoolers that I work with. That is not to say that I viewed him as being immature, or his sadness as unimportant; but more to say that issues going on when we are young still creep up into adulthood. He is 23 years old and Facebook is still presenting problems for him. He still feels left out. That makes me really sad. Maybe that’s because I partly understand it; it’s easy for me to jump to conclusions upon reading something on Facebook or Twitter that I’m not a part of. It just made me think a lot; we tell our middle-schoolers and high-schoolers that these issues “get better” when they grow up, and in a lot of ways that’s true; there’s much less petty gossip, bullying, and deliberate attempts to induce jealousy. But it’s all still there, even if to a lesser degree. Even if it’s to a less deliberate degree, which in many ways, is significantly harder to deal with.
The thing is, which I’m realizing more and more each day, it’s really up to us to make things how we want them. If there are issues, waiting around until they magically resolve themselves just doesn’t work. We’ll be waiting a long time.
