My friend Micah said something interesting today: Tony always has a spot for another friend, but then again he always has another spot for another friend. The point he was trying to make was my friend circle is very fluid. I have a lot of strong relationships, but I constantly enjoy hanging out with new people. I've lived with a different group of people every year for the last 7 years. I like new people. It's not that i don't value other relationships, it's just that life changes.
However Micah's comment made me think. Do I not invest in my relationships enough? Am I too fluid? Is it hard to be my friend? Interesting. Something to wrestle with.
Have you ever heard of the Monkey Sphere? The story goes that scientists studied monkey brains and found some way to predict the average size of tribes in a species. They were given a human brain (supposedly without being told what it was) and came up with a tribe size of 150. The idea is that you can only have something like 150 people at a time who are in your "tribe," who are yours, who you care about in more than an abstract way.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the accuracy of the details, it does seem true that there isn't enough time in the day to have more than a certain number of good friends.
On the other hand, everyone's lives change, and you might not have time for friends for a while. Friends may not always have time for you even if you have time for them. If one struggles to keep old friends to the exclusion of new ones, one will wind up alone.
Short version: I think you've been handling this issue well enough. You drift away from friends a bit because you're devoted to your job, but you take opportunities to reconnect when they present themselves as well as creating those opportunities from time to time.