Late Night Fiction It’s all in your mind

Making Friends

It seems like I only wake up in a good mood when I’ve spent the night before with people I really enjoy. Other times it’s just a mediocre night, a mediocre day. But my mood this morning got me thinking about how it’s easiest to make friends when you don’t have them. When you have friends, you might gain a sort of lackadaisical attitude: you’re set, you have friends already so why would you need more? I’m not entirely like this, I like to go out and make new friends constantly. But even with this attitude of trying to make new friends as much as possible, there are some unavoidable facets that come with having friends.

It’s like this: if I go to dinner with friends as opposed to being by myself, no stranger is going to approach me and vice-versa. Therefore, no new friends on that occasion. If I’m walking down the sidewalk and see a friend, I may stop and talk with them—for longer if I’m alone than already with friends, more than likely.

There are some philosophical implications I’ve been just gaining knowledge of lately that have to do with this. Seneca, in arguing that life isn’t short if you know how to take advantage of it, basically said that we don’t live when our time is taken up by preoccupations; we simply exist. By preoccupations, he means people, money, trying to achieve a life of leisure, basically things that take away time from yourself and doing what you want to do. People are obviously a big perpetrator of this. Think about all the times you’ve spent waiting on someone to get ready or even “getting ready” when instead you could be out doing what you’re getting ready to do or anything else.

This all comes back to being your own person. Life really should be about living for yourself in my opinion, and just because that makes you a perceivably “selfish” person doesn’t mean it’s wrong; the day you become a douche bag about it is the day it becomes wrong. I think I’m going to take a break from my normal friends, as I have this weekend, and see where life takes me—do my own thing like always, just officially (as far as they’re concerned).