^ Time + Knowledge + Interest

I realized recently that it is slightly miraculous tomeet and make friends with someone as an adult. Between the demands on mostpeople’s time from family and career, most people don’t have time to connectwith others that aren’t installed permanently in their lives already. So whenyou make the acquaintance of someone who is interesting, AND has time … it’senough to perk up and take serious notice. And when that person also has anintelligence mind? It’s a red-letter day!

I don’t have many red-letter days.

Most people, who are interesting AND have intelligence, arealready wall-to-wall on bandwidth. They have demanding spouses, or kids, orboth. Many folks like this are only able to connect with non-family via work.So beyond the confines of work, there’s nothing. This is a shame, and a waste.I want to call their demanding spouses and ask them to let out the leash a littlemore. I want to ask if their teenage kids really NEED to be shuttled hither andyon, when they are capable of driving themselves.

It’s back to that self-care thing. Is serving the demands offamily, after serving the demands of career – is that really the best thing foreach of us in terms of growing ourselves? I suspect not.

After all … in all those little reminders to get in touchwith people, they rarely (never) admonish anyone to reconnect with the fam. No.They admonish … reconnect with friends. It seems to me that it’s friends whoget you through more so than the spouse or the kids or the parents who push andpull as much as they might nourish. It seems to me that allowing family andcareer to dictate who you are friends with and how much time you invest inthose friends is decidedly NOT self-care. It’s self-neglect.