There should be no one in your life who you wouldn’t share a pint with.
After every inane interaction or mundane conversation, reflect on the time expended and ask yourself… Did this invigorate and inspire me? Was anything profound explored together or would I have derived more value from a book or podcast?
Who you surround yourself with, at work or otherwise, is as an important decision as how you choose to perceive the world or what you pursue.
Not every bit of banter needs to be an act of enlightenment, sometimes a bit of revelry or letting off steam is enough, but it’s easy to get lost in surface level socialization. To be comfortably constrained by the same, permissive, social circle.
In many ways, I was a socially inept introvert until my studies in Scotland. Where an unbroken millenia-long chain of pub culture and the combination of kilts and corsets helped cultivate charisma.
Prior to that it could be said that I didn’t know how to people. I had friends, but not of the depth or caliber I have now.
I learned a few lessons under the shadow of Stirling Castle. No one would be invited out more than 3 times if they always refused. An honor system developed amongst our circle wherein one never worried about splitting the bill, trusting that your companions would get the next round or start the process anew another time.
But most of all, I learned that being genuinely curious about everything and everyone, made conversing and subsequent carousing effortless.
I digress, but… it is (almost) always true that someone knows something you don’t. What topic(s) or subculture are they passionate about? Could you get a different glimpse of and learn something from them?
Armed with that insight and the ability to pour a perfect pint, I’ve since found it easy – overly so – to people.
It becomes easy to make the acquaintance of middling sorts, to find others who’ve enshrined mediocrity and forsworn momentum in favor of petty, plentiful, pleasures.
I and many others I know lost years to video games and mindless consumption of media. The causes and cures for some of those snares are topics for another day. I’ve escaped that orbit, but many others are happy to remain there free of obligation or opportunity.
Eating tendies while playing whatever today’s heroic pursuit offset simulator or watching, and only conversing about, the “game” remains a comfortable wallow and certainly passes for friendship for huge swathes of society.
For those of us who once lacked social savoir-faire the desire to be liked, to please people, may never go away. But, if dedicated to nobler things it becomes increasingly easy to discard and disassociate from the herd.
Then of course, there’s the “good” person trap to contend with too. The vainglorious form of social martyrdom felt by some I know, that simply because you think well enough of a person to not want to see them ended that you’re obligated to associate with them for perpetuity.
Perhaps they’re a neighbor with overmuch time on their hands or a college friend who never quite developed a personality, but realizing that some people are good people, but not your people is a gift to you all involved. You free them from the tyranny of your expectations for their potential and yourself from squandering another second.
You should be genuinely excited by the prospect of seeing someone. To engage with them otherwise is a disservice to you both.
Cheers to that.