“Do you want to be friends?”
Remember how easy that used to be to ask a complete stranger? You were at a park with a metal death trap they called a jungle gym, or sitting at a table piled with finger paint and paper with blue and red lines, or just finding a seat with a tray of cafeteria food and a carton of milk. You were there and there was someone with a kind face, a nice shirt, funny hair, or a toy of your favorite dinosaur and, with all the bravado only a young ego can muster, you asked “do you want to be friends?”
As you grew, as the fear of rejection, the need to protect yourself and the fear of being othered gripped your heart you found more discrete, subtle, or less direct ways of asking if someone wanted to be friends. Or maybe you stopped asking altogether and dwelled in the ambiguous presence of peers and just…waited.
Eventually (I hope) you found your people. You may have even found your people more than once as you discovered more about yourself and shed some friendships for more genuine ones.
I seemingly didn’t grow out of the more direct approach. I remember sitting on the school bus heading the high school, when a new kid sat behind me. I turned around and introduced myself. She said her name was Kellie. She was very shy and soft spoken. She had just moved from NY and her father was opening a sushi and hibachi restaurant nearby. “I’ve never had sushi,” I said. “Is it good?” She shrugged and said she grew up with it, her father being a Japanese chef. “I’d like to try it sometime,” I said. “Do you want to be friends?”
Our junior year of high school she confessed that even though she said yes, she thought it weird that I asked. She also said she was glad she said yes.
It was around this time that my parents, planning a date night for themselves told me I could have a party at the house. I had to promise not to drink (not an issue) and to not let it get too rowdy. I planned a relaxed night of pizza, movies, and socializing with my friends.
Around 11 or so, my parents came home. Papa went to bed as he often retired early. Mom stayed up with us. She talked to some of my friends she had known for years and a few others she had never met. At one point, she slid up beside me and said
“Baby, you don’t have a clique.”
I was a bit offended and said “What do you mean? This is my clique.”
She pointed out that my group of friends wasn’t homogenous. My core group of friends was a diverse group of smart kids. This larger group of friends included some band kids, art kids, jocks, cheerleaders, and goth kids. Indeed, this group was the same group that gathered every morning by corner of the literature hall in front of the school office. A group that had begun with the aforementioned core group and had grown to sprawl across the entire hall.
“Ok?” I said. “But these are still my friends. This is my clique.” I took stock of my friend group. Kids with varied interests and personalities, different ways of expressing themselves, different backgrounds…but every one of them trying to cultivate the best version of themself. And all of them allowing me and each other to figure out ourselves.
Mom smiled and wrapped her arm around me. “Nice. You’re sort of like a social alchemist.”
She wasn’t wrong. There is a somewhat alchemical art to my group of friends and family (and I often use these terms interchangeably). I don’t much need friends exactly like me. I need other perspectives and visions to balance mine. To ground me or lift me. I also want to be that for others. And I think many people reading this want to be part of that reciprocal cycle of growth, support, and change.
The same can be said with this adventure of creating a group for the intentional community. There is a core of people I already know I want to grow old with in some fashion. Some I want to watch wrinkle day to day with me. Others, I know I want to call up after weeks or months and catch up like no time has passed at all.
These people are swirling in a pot simmering over a magic flame (or sometimes a pool on a hot summer day), and like a good alchemist, I pluck others from the ether (ether being people I meet along the way in my life). After examining them, I place them in the crucible with my friends/family and see what happens.
Unlike alchemy, which is based on magic, faith, and science, these chemical reactions are self determined. People get a choice. They can open up. They can choose to allow these new friendships to change them. Or they can be choose to remove themselves to become something else. There’s no wrong way just as there are an infinite ways to be. There are infinite ways to make friends and change.
My hope on this journey is to find those elements who want to join and change together while learning about myself as well.
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