The Intimacy of Doing Nothing
One of my closest friends was home for about a month over the holidays. I was super excited to see him, but I found that I kept putting off reaching out, though. In my head, I had to come up with this plan. Would we grab coffee somewhere? Maybe we’d go do something like TopGolf or a barcade. I just didn’t want to plan anything – I was tired after work or just life in general.
When I finally got around to reaching out, I wasn’t sure what to do. I offered that he come over to my apartment to play some games and watch TV. For some reason, I thought this would be too boring. Even though it’s what we did regularly back in college. Of course, he gladly accepted. He came over, and we had a great time.
In my adult life, friendships seem to have shifted some. There’s normally (not always) some sort of activity you do now. Barhopping, grabbing a coffee, eating dinner. So many of these things are now done at other locations.
Perhaps the thing I miss most about college and childhood is the casual hangs with friends. It was incredibly common to just sit with a friend or roommate on the couch and do nothing. The nothing created its own opportunity. You could watch a movie or play a video game or just talk. That art of doing nothing of importance with a friend seems to have diminished with age.
Growing up, the best thing that could happen on a given day was my mom saying I could spend the night over at a friend’s house. Sometimes, we’d go out and do things, but most sleep overs consisted of ordering pizza, playing video games, and staying up too late. The magic of them was getting to spend extra time with someone you cared about.
I don’t mean to shit on any gatherings or activities I do with my own friends. I don’t want any friends reading this to get the wrong idea. I enjoy getting coffee and grabbing a beer. However, it feels like growing up has lost a sense of intimacy, though. There were points in time with many friends where we would just watch something or sit and chat with no expectation of something needing to get done. Now, it feels far too intimate to ask them to come over and hang on the couch. Those intimate activities have been reserved for significant others, but it doesn’t just have to be for them.
If a friend from out of town were to come visit me, I’d feel obligated to plan a full weekend going to restaurants, visiting museums, and doing things unique to the city in which I live. That’s not a normal weekend for me, though. Sure, there’s some obligation to “make the trip worthwhile,” but if it’s a good friend, isn’t sharing time together the real treat? There can be more balance between going out into the world and just spending time together.
Maybe it’s the busyness of life after childhood and college. Our weeks are filled by our jobs and chores and running errands. Sometimes, I find myself in this state of constant movement where pausing feels like a waste of time, something unaffordable. Perhaps this trickles over into my friendships. Watching a movie on Netflix with a friend could be perceived as a waste compared to going out into the world to do something. Ironically, the sign of a close friendship might just be that ability to sit together and do not much of anything.
It’s possible this is still an aftershock of the pandemic, that now far off monster that we think is gone but still haunts us in unexpected ways. One day, it was perfectly acceptable to hang out with college friends in close quarters. The next, it was frowned upon. Tiny bubbles were formed with only the outdoors acting as an area where we could intermingle. It was necessary at the time but antithetical with how these deep relationships operate. During that time, it was easy to isolate because that was the expectation. Now, life has moved on.
Maybe COVID made it so that we held friends and loved ones at an arm’s length, but that’s not a good reason for continuing to do so. Maybe watching movies or playing board games or some of those other quiet events aren’t for everybody, but I think most people value in some way these intimate activities. Letting someone into your home or apartment takes a leap of faith. You allow them to see who you really are, what you value, what you collect, and how messy you are.
I’ve also been reminding myself that the only non-renewable resource in this life is time. We can never get it back, which means time is arguably the thing we should be most concerned about spending. Maybe I need to be more intentional (and vulnerable) with the time I spend with friends. It might seem daunting at first, but it pays off. I won’t stop going on hikes or to bars with friends, but I’ll try for those quieter hang outs as well, the ones where you don’t do much of anything. Sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can do with a friend.
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