Flow

You know those friends where it doesn't matter the time of day or if something big has happened, whenever you talk everything just clicks? I feel like I have a shortage of those friends at the moment.

This weekend I hung out w/ a friend I've known since I was 14. We get along great and we have things in common. Spending time together is fun. But it's not really anything more than that. He's a great guy, pretty funny, but I don't think we'll ever hang out and at the end I'll say to myself, "That was awesome. I wish we could hang out every day. All the time. Forever." It will only ever be just fun. We spent a few hours together, easily long enough to get into some good conversation. But it didn't happen. I don't want to call it superficial conversation but I don't think there's another word for it. We know each other enough that even if there was silence it wasn't awkward but something was off. It was almost too chill for me. And that's saying something.

At school, both freshman year and sophomore year, I've had friends, both guys and girls, where the conversation just flows and anything and everything we talk about is interesting, no matter what it is. Being home puts my friend options at a much lower level. I do have a few really good people still around but more and more people stay at school or just go away all summer. Then there are my school friends who are far away to begin with but are even farther away due to study abroads or other vacations, and with a few of my favorites: missions.

I am definitely a communicator when I have the right people around so flow and clicking is a big deal to me. I can talk with anyone but I don't click with everyone. Connecting with people can be very special. Communication is obviously a key to connecting, in any form it takes. When you get to the moment where you can almost see through someone else, you know great things will happen. You crack them open and suddenly you've found a person who understands you completely, or at least tries very hard to. You've found someone who will imagine you complexly.

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into the cracks and I saw into yours. -Quentin Jacobsen (Paper Towns by John Green)

That might seem like a weird jump from talking about flow in conversation to some John Green doctrine of imagining people complexly but if you haven't figured it out by now, I abide greatly by the whole stream of consciousness dealio. I can't avoid it. I talk like that. I write like that. I communicate like that. All of which makes it even more exciting when I do find someone with whom I click.

Last YouTube video I watched: Liam's Still Got Legs

Not precisely in an unpleasant way

“I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them - it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.”

If you guys weren't aware, I'm so incredibly in love with the writing of one John Green. The quote above is from his amazing book Paper Towns. And it's what I'm going to blog about today.

I'm sure I've mentioned previously how last April I said good-bye to my awesome friends who are guys on account of how they're going to preach the word of God for two years straight, thus making our only form of communication good ol' snail mail. (For someone who spends so much time on the Internet, I already did have an appreciation for the mail but it sure has grown in the last year. If you ever need to know how much it costs to send letters to Scotland, I can let you know in a heartbeat.)

So here's where the quote comes in: Freshman year, for me, was amazing. I could not have asked for a better start to college. But here's the thing: all good things must come to an end. I spent many hours last year with my friends, both guys and girls, just sitting around and talking. When it got especially warm at the end of March and into April that time was spent outside on the basketball court and laying on a bunch of blankets outside one of our halls. These were people I had only known for seven months, if that. And yet it was the end of something so beautiful and something so full of love. Every moment we spent together was bittersweet only due to the fact that we knew that was one more moment we wouldn't have together. With the girls, I knew I would see them come fall. With the boys . . . it was kind of ridiculous because we would be saying good-bye before they were technically gone. I think my favorite things about the ending weeks of freshman year were sitting with my boys, not necessarily talking or doing anything besides watching movies or sitting, but just being with them, observing them; these things made the leaving a little more powerful and important. But like Q in Paper Towns, it was not the kind of sad I minded.

There were plenty of times I took a (figurative) step back and just listened to what was going on around me. Laying on blankets in the sun, "studying", was the perfect opportunity to take in everything. As sad as it was, knowing I wouldn't see my amazing boys for two years, it wasn't necessarily the hurting kind of sad. It was sad, and that was it. You couldn't stay sad for long around them because of the times we had already spent together.

Yes, it was an ending. But that's okay. I can handle an ending like that.