a new pattern in my friendships
i'm used to this pattern:
- meet a new person
- 1 times out of 100, i'll really like this person
- dislike them after having discovered a major flaw
- work really hard to disentangle myself from them
- whine about how hard it is
and i feel that i experienced steps 1 and 2 lately with t but step 3 feels different
i realized she isn't as intellectually playful as i thought she was ; she was just playing audience to my intellectual playfulness and echoing me -- but this is not a character flaw.
and i do not feel the need to separate myself from her in any substantial way. i peacefully resign to the reality that maybe i won't have as much fun with her as i originally thought but that's ok
and why is it different this time?
because i have a lot of fun with books now.
i think books feel like social connection to me, but they are a form of social connection that feels easy to maintain, never annoying and very rewarding. a lot of the best things about friendship (like gleaning new insights, laughter) are achieved through books without the strain of falsehood or inconvenience. i don't pretend with books to like their ideas, and books are there for me when i want them and don't bother me when i don't. books make me feel connected to another human being more deeply than when i interact with them in person, because the depth of connection made possible by a nonstop stream of 80k words is unattainable in conversation.
i really get to hear someone out when i read. and the ideas can be very good. the potential of an idea to be fully expressed is much higher in book than in person.
i feel i was searching for SOME SEMBLANCE of connection and now that i have it, i don't need my in-person relationships to be too special
i don't know why it felt so difficult to unentangle from people before--maybe because deep down i was doubtful of whether i should let go of my "only lifeline" but now i have a lifeline and i don't feel that i'm even deeply entangled to begin with.
you know who taught me to view books as friends, originally? proust. his "sur la lecture" talked about all the benefits of books as superior friends. after i read it, i logically understood but did not emotionally identify through empirical experience. but now i feel it fully and have readymade logic to express the phenomena