With a Little Help From My Friends

I hate Arizona. It's not fair. This is just so unfair. It happened eleven years ago, but I still remember this conversation with my then four and six-year-old cousins as they faced a move from Blacksburg to Tucson. For them, their dad's tenure at the University of Arizona, job security, was meaningless. The move meant only one thing to these kids: that they were going to have no friends. At an age where "Or I'm not going to be your best friend," could convince you of anything, any child would undoubtedly feel the same way.

During those childhood days, despite a heavy focus on making friends, friendship was very simple. A person was either a friend or not a friend. You were either invited to the birthday party or you weren't. Everyone wanted more friends. There were no delineations. No acquaintances, classmates, coworkers, Twitter followers. As we entered late adolescence, though the focus on making friends diminished, the process remained simple. We were guided by a host of components -- those in the same clubs, those in our classes, those who had the same lunch period, those who lived in the same hall. Most of the time, friendship sort of just, happened.

Then came the real world. Where you are not necessarily in the same phase of life as those around you. Where, apparently, not everyone is in the market for friends. W

here friends don't necessarily fall into your lap. You have to make valiant efforts.

Yesterday I was talking to a college friend who is now working in a not-so-friendly-city where he initially knew no one. He recounted several occasions on which he attempted to strike up conversations. To at least achieve the acquaintance mark on the meter. The problem is that people arrive places with groups of friends and simply have no interest in making new ones. I refuse to believe that people in their young, mid, or even late-twenties believe they have already met everyone in the world they want to meet.

Another friend (who started as a coworker) recently moved to San Francisco and calls himself his "social architect." I'm still trying to build my social circle. Someone I would peg as the most social I know, he too lamented the difficulty. I'm just so bummed. I met this girl at the laundromat and she seemed really cool. I gave her my number but I doubt she's going to call. In her shoes I guess I wouldn't trust my intentions either but I really just want to meet people.

A little too often, my music set is interrupted by a commercial for Events & Adventures, a group that brings together similar people in the same area to meet and engage in various activities. I'm one of those romantics who childishly (or even naively) believes that friendships still sort of just happen when they're meant to be. That something beautiful can't be forced. But I'll be the first to identify flaws in my philosophy. After all, we are living in a world where people can both post and respond to ads for "strictly platonic" relationships.

After four years, I am once again living in the city in which I grew up. But it's not the same. Even this place that I unconditionally love has moments of loneliness. Many of the friends (or the brother) who made this the city I love have since moved away be it for school or work. Even here, I have to make an effort.

On January 31, 1999, the same year of my cousins' move, a childhood friend and I made a vow and buried it in her front yard. It read, "We promise to be forever friends!" It sounds like something out of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. As the novel implies, often in life, thinking like a child might actually be more "adult." And if you ask me, making friends is one of those times. So to my friends in search of friends, some (quasi-stolen) advice: Be patient. It takes a long time to grow an old friend.