Friendship is a Marathon, not a Sprint.
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Being a weird art kid is something that I’ve grown to admire about myself. As one of my closest friends has succinctly put it: “To be cringe is to be free.” Words to live by, truly.
So yeah, I’m weird, and I like art. I’m aware that this makes me a bit of an acquired taste, but that just makes the relationships I do have all the sweeter.
This “sigma” nature has been both a blessing and a curse, and I wanted to share the unique perspective it has given me over my two weeks in Buenos Aires.
For one thing, I don’t think I ever fully appreciated the relationships and support systems I had back home in Holland. My friendships and my family are connections that fell into my lap in one way or another.
I think it’s a bit obvious to say that studying abroad strips you of your support system, but hearing it and experiencing it in real time are two different things. It’s like day one of freshman year all over again: everyone is networking like crazy. You’re all alone in a new city, and mama ain’t coming to pick you up. Things are awkward. Conversations are clumsily filled with surface-level chit-chat and fleeting sparks of what is to come. Everyone is unfamiliar, and for an introvert, that can be really draining.
So I’ll ask you the same thing I asked myself when I landed here two weeks ago: What do you do when you have to start from scratch?
Well, I hate to say it, but I’m about to drop a gaming metaphor. There’s this great cozy game called Stardew Valley that I absolutely adore, and one of its main mechanics is befriending the various villagers who live in town. You can’t become friends with a villager overnight. Rather, it’s a gradual process that takes many in-game weeks to cultivate. There are no shortcuts, no secret to becoming best friends overnight, and the relationship will even decay if left unchecked for too long.
The best part is that befriending the villagers has absolutely nothing to do with completing the main story. It’s about chasing the experience for its own sake.
Can you guess what I’m going to say next?
Friendship is a marathon, not a sprint.
(Woah, she said the thing from the title, that’s crazy!)
Yes, clearly people are much more complicated than any metaphor can capture. But I’ve learned to value the grains of truth that Stardew Valley has to offer. Sometimes you need to get out of your head about being the funniest, the most engaging, or becoming BFFs with everyone right off the bat. True friendship is the laborious (and sometimes monotonous) act of showing up every day and investing time and effort into a process that is worth it one thousand times over.
Starting from scratch in a new city is daunting, but if you are able to zoom out and see the big picture, you’ll find the weight of it all has lifted from your shoulders.
For now, just engage in the experience for its own sake. Learn to love wastefully. And who knows? What goes around does tend to come back around.
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