Chapter Sixty: Long Distance Friendships (~jinghan)

I realised that since I’ve been here I haven’t really had time to talk to you about anything non-trivial about my life. It’s like when you’ve been friends with someone for a while and then you realise that all the conversations you’ve ever had are somewhat smallish talk.

Actually it is very much like that: being this far away from all the people I know made me realise how little I know some of them. At uni its pretty easy to make friends – you say hi to someone they say “hey are you eating lunch this hour?” and you hang out with them when you run into them around uni. And you even start looking forward to seeing them in the predictable places and times that you generally see them. But then you hop on a plane and go and study somewhere on the other hemisphere of the world and you realise that you never really knew what was going on in their lives.

By lives, I don’t necessarily mean things what they did on the weekend, what mark they got on their mid-semester exam… what about that stuff that influences who they are? The stuff that they believe about life, god and the universe? What are they scared of? What makes them sad? What makes them happy? What’s their life story? What do they feel about a particular topic? What is their passion about life?

So I have found that by being away from my “friends” I have been compelled to befriend them more. I have spent hours emailing or talking to people that I never had so much care to talk deeply to when I was able to seem them a few times a week because I “knew” them… right? But now, talking to them I realised ther was so much more to know about them.

If you are feeling bored or sorry for yourself or stressed or lonely – your challenge for this week is to get to know someone that little bit better – from the inside not the outside.