Sometimes we say 'I really like your dress' when what we mean is 'I really like you' and sometimes it just means 'I really like your dress' but we wouldn't say it to someone we didn't like so it still sort of means ‘I like you’ and I wonder at what point we decided it was acceptable to compliment someone on how they dressed that morning but awkward to compliment someone for anything else. I want to tell people at work that I think they're thoughtful and cool and funny and have an energy that makes me feel safe or that I enjoy hearing their laughter from the other side of the room but that seems inappropriate for the workplace, so instead I say 'I really like your dress' and they smile and say 'thank you' and we have this tiny friendly moment where I have confessed a like for you and then it passes. I don't mean like as a euphemism for having a crush, I just mean like.
Once when my son was four or five, I had taken him to the dinosaur sandpit at Te Papa. As we were leaving he said, ‘Can my friend Connor come to my birthday party?’ ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Who’s Connor?’ ‘I just met him HEY CONNOR,’ he yelled. ‘MUM SAYS YOU CAN COME TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY.’ Connor yelled back, ‘OKAY THANKS’. I paused for a moment to see if there was anything else, but nope, that was it. And then we left. I guess when you’re of an age where ‘you can’t come to my birthday party’ is the most crushing thing you can say, the inverse of being invited to a birthday party is the highest compliment. Actually going to the event is irrelevant.
Can you imagine making friends like that, as an adult? Of course, they never saw each other again. But that gift of easily making friends that small children have… why do we lose it? How do we get it back?
The other day I asked someone at work if they wanted to have a coffee with me sometime. I said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask for a while’ [this was true] and ‘I’m trying to be better at making friends’ [also true] and she said yes immediately. This particular colleague comes to the book club I set up at work. It’s one of those things where sometimes no one comes and sometimes two people come and one time several people came, but I persist because not only do we talk about books, it gave me enough of a connection to invite this colleague for a coffee. We left the office and went to a nearby coffee shop where I had my usual (oat latte, one sugar; I haven’t yet conquered the unsweetened coffee) and she had a chai latte because she doesn’t drink coffee, and we talked about things that were mostly not work (but a little bit work: you have to ease into these things).
Listen, I was so proud of myself for asking that I told some other friends in our group chat, and they cheered me on. It felt like such a big deal, but it wasn’t, or maybe it was? It was a casual coffee with someone cool from work, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal.
Making friends is hard. We are all busy and there’s a lot going on. A pandemic. A cyclone. Climate change. Worries about housing security. The appointments to make and the bills to pay and the notices from school and that my foot is still swollen like a balloon 3 months after I fractured it and 2 months after the cast came off, and my dog needs attention and I want to just curl up and read my book because the outside world is already asking too much of me. Making time for the friends I already have is a challenge. Our schedules conflict. We’ve moved to opposite sides of the city, or country. One of us isn’t feeling well on the day. Someone that depends on us needs something. You know how it is. When your lives move in different directions it is harder to keep in touch regularly, even when the desire is there.
Work seems like an ideal opportunity to make friends, because of the regular proximity, and yet somehow it is still difficult, because someone needs to be brave enough to take that step to go beyond work, and I wish I was that brave person more often, but I’m not naturally that way inclined. So when I asked that workmate for coffee it did feel worth celebrating. There are a few other people in the office I really like who I might invite for coffee soon.
In the meantime I suppose I’ll continue with being friendly when I bump into people in the elevator, joining in with things as often as I can, and telling people I really like their outfit.
How do you make friends?
Note for non-Wellingtonians, it's called the dinosaur sandpit because there's an entire dinosaur fossil (presumably not real) in the sandpit, that children can dig to uncover.
Years ago I learned that having a 'best friend at work' was a majorly predictive factor in staying with your job, being less stressed at work and just generally it was a good thing. I might be showing my personality type here but I had to be told this, by scientists, and then of course it was freaking obvious. So: I went in search for my best friend at work. I selected her (based on her awesomeness) and I just started having the odd coffee and it went from there. It was the start of a 20 year friendship that lasted pretty well until she moved to the other side of the planet. Just knowing you have work friends makes work a better place to go on a Monday - off to play with my friends at work! Here is a link to some recent stuff on work friendships:
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6759-friends-at-work.html