Skip to main content

Social Recession

For those who have seen their social circle shrink over time because of a variety of reasons including the pandemic will find this interview useful reading. I have known E for about seventeen years now and she has been single the whole time. Speaking to her recently, I could not help marvel at how she has managed to keep her social life more vibrant and steady than most other people I know - partnered or single. It is still the group of five women, most of them well into their retirement like E. It is still the same semi remote island close to nothing they gather together for a week in summer. Fortunately for this set, no one is seriously ill or disabled and everyone is alive. 

But what is remarkable is that they have kept this tradition going for close to forty years now. That is the remarkable power of ritual. E tells me that they communication over the rest of the years is pretty sparse but there is the time of year when the group activates and starts planning for the off-the-grid week. Conversations happen during that week that are not possible to have any other place and time. One of the authors interviewed in this story also highlights the importance of such ritual

"Ritual is one thing. So having a friendship anniversary that you celebrate, or having like a recurring trip every year or having a built in once a month, we all get together and play cards, to choose a really retro example that I'm loving lately. These are things that allow us to stay connected, and kind of continually check in. And then there are just the basics that apply to any good relationship. Actually making an effort to speak openly about what's really going on with you, assuring your friend that you want to hear about where they're at right now, and wanting the unvarnished truth."

E and her friends understood early on that just sticking with the habit would pay huge dividends down the road. Everyone committed to not bailing out but making this week a priority over other things. All of these ladies except E have spouses, kids and grandkids who need their time and attention. It is that much more remarkable that E could serve as the anchor for her group and keep this tradition alive - not fall victim to social recession

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more