where are we headed?
a few weeks ago i realized that all three of my housemates’ relationships are long-distance, and then i realized that most of my out-of-school friends’ relationships are long-distance, and then i realized that most of my friendships have been long-distance for almost my entire life, the only exception being my senior year of college
all this says a little about the times we live in (mobility is easier than ever, wealth has never been more concentrated in a handful of cities, etc) but most likely it says more about me and the people i choose to spend time with. after all i have plenty of high school classmates who are happy with staying in texas indefinitely, and for the most part they live near their friends and partners and everything feels quite stable
i’ve been thinking about that line from past lives - “You had to leave because you're you. And the reason I liked you is because you're you. And who you are is someone who leaves.” for better or worse it seems i am drawn towards people who leave
i think i am unusually good at maintaining long-distance friendships. probably i have had too much practice - a pandemic during college, peers i saw once a year at math camps throughout middle school and high school, almost a decade’s worth of strangers i met through writing on the internet. in theory i could probably keep doing this for the rest of my life, but it leaves me wondering - where are we headed? what are we building towards? what does it mean if i’m only going to see you ten, twenty, fifty more times in my life? what should i be doing differently?
despite living in sf and working on ai research i really don’t care much for most technologies or sci-fi. my startup friends are constantly bored by how uninteresting my visions of the future are. the only consumer tech i really long for is better ways to hang out with people far from me. my mind is already more digital than flesh with all its calendar events and text messages and blog posts and journal entries; take the rest of me too if you must
sometimes a flood of memories overwhelms me and i think about everyone i used to talk to. i have met too many people - first and last names are beginning to repeat, new faces are starting to look like mashups of ones i’ve seen before. i know that these lists will only grow longer, and the past will only grow larger, and the pile of things to mourn will only grow heavier. i wonder how old people are not constantly drowning in everything that has already occurred
the other day i was talking to a coworker about some of my friendship issues and they reminded me that i am young and that i have only met a small portion of all the people i will ever know. i suppose that is most likely true, and i suppose it was meant to be a reassuring thought, but i kind of hate it. i think the future is too uncertain to not love the present ferociously. and still i can’t help but wonder every time i talk to you - where are we headed?
"i think the future is too uncertain to not love the present ferociously." help im gonna cry
"i know that these lists will only grow longer, and the past will only grow larger, and the pile of things to mourn will only grow heavier" I've had this worry sometimes that the more people I talk to and conversations I have, the more it feels like everything bleeds together, I start forgetting more who said what, even personal details like what people are up to or where they're living seem to become harder to remember. it's a little concerning, but I also take some comfort in the claim that we have virtually unlimited memory, and as long as we have some use for a piece of information we'll remember it. all that said it does feel like the "weight" of the past is heavier now in my late twenties than it was a decade ago, and I wonder what it'll feel like many decades hence