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Binding Ties

Anyone J's age can relate to this. What the world promised to be when they left to college or had spent a year there is nothing like how it has shaped up to be. The struggles to sustain new friendships has proven a big challenge while the world has opened up in unexpected ways allowing for relationships to form that may not have otherwise been a consideration. In effect, everything we told these kids about what they could expect from their college experience has turned out to be a lie - not just what the parents and their generation told them but even friends and family only a few years older than them. No one had any advice for how to navigate the mess these kids found themselves in. 

Evaluating the strength and the value of the pre-pandemic social ties has become a common theme and applies to the rest of us a much as it to kids nearing the end of college. There is greater sense of fatality and finality for them because college is a time bound, one in a life-time experience - the expectations if not met cannot be made whole another time or so they feel. When you have lived over half your life, the trade-offs are quite different. 

My efforts to check on folks periodically ended up being unwelcome in more than one instance. Some stopped responding entirely so I gathered whatever they were going through did not square with being randomly sociable. You either stayed in the inner circle to be seen and counted everyday as the action unfolded or your overtures were unwelcome. If you were already estranged, your situation did not improve over the course of the pandemic. 

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