--{ drift* }------
So in the last few months, I had to go through a security check for my upcoming job in the fall. In my security check questionnaire, I had to list the names of people I knew, in various categories.1 Best friends. People who knew me while I lived in S. People who knew me while I attended M. People who knew me while I worked for T.
I thought about the people I wasn't planning on listing, not for circumstantial reasons such as being difficult to contact2 or being in between permanent addresses3 or being forgotten by me in an episode of pure spaciness.4 No, what I thought about were my deliberate omissions.
By forcing me to go through who not to list, the questionnaire made me think about how much we drift. How people change, and how the people that I listed as people with whom I still keep in contact now are not the same as the people with whom I've been close over the years.
I suppose that's just how it goes. Unless two individuals happen to be on the very similar trajectories for reasons of their own,5 they will usually drift apart from each other when they don't make the effort to stay in touch, when their life circumstances change so that they can't understand each other's drives, motives, or lives anymore. And there are so many people, in my life, with whom that's happened.
In this manner, most of my married or partnered friends and I have drifted apart. Married or partnered life, it seems, is entirely different from the single life. Likewise, I've drifted and will probably continue to drift apart from most of the people I know who've chosen more materially driven lives.
But there are subtler drifts than this. Like between people who desire physical adventures and people (like me) who desire mental adventures. Or between people who feel grown up and people who (like me) don't. Or between people who desire status and people who (like me) desire learning. Maybe people with these different desires don't drift apart as quickly, but they nevertheless are pulled in different directions. And those pulls, too, add up over time.
I used blame others for this, but I don't think I do anymore. It's just what happens, as I guess I said already. And it's, of course, my fault too. I'm just sorry for all of the blame that I put on you.
I still find drift kind of sad, though. In the way I find any ending kind of sad.
At different times, I've had different approaches to drift as well. Sometimes I've thought that friendship bonds were in and of themselves valuable, that an effort should be made to retain whatever bonds you have. At other times, I've thought that bonds shouldn't be forced, that what matters is hanging around people who drift in the same direction as you.
I'm not sure anymore. I lean, these days, towards not putting in the effort. More out of exhaustion than out of any principled reason. I suppose there's some kind of balancing test to it all, a list of things to consider when deciding (consciously or subconsciously) whether a relationship between very different people is worth it. And I suppose that just like how people can drift apart, people can drift together, too.
Wish I knew.
040301
* This is dedicated to all the friendships and relationships that have ever drifted apart.
1.
I must, at this point, note the check's emphasis on
physical place, and on people I knew at certain physical places. This is
something they should probably change in the future, what with the
increasing prevalence of internet friends and all. For instance, everyone
I knew on SCAABOS, back when it was active.
I must also note that, wow, I have friends that I've known now for almost
or even over half my life! Pretty incredible, if you ask me.
2. Ed, in Japan.
3. Wayne, who had just returned from Guatemala and had yet to find a place in DC.
4. Eric, Anna, Becca, I totally blanked.
5. And I've met so few of those. Two, that I can count.