Lessons Learned: The Importance of Fellowship and Deep Friendship
“I liked the part where you talked about how having a car enables you to be wherever for whoever. It’s a sweet lesson.” — Catherine Chang, re: my previous Lessons Learned
After graduating from college, I took it upon myself to push the boundaries of what it means to live my life to the fullest. Or, as the Snapchat/Instagram stickers would say, living my best life.
Now that I work in a heavily data-driven industry, I think it’s appropriate share some statistics:
In the past 2 months, I boarded 9 flights and 2 trains to travel a total of 4700 miles to 5 different cities. Plus two more cities and 600 miles on the car. (tangentially, I’m beginning to understand people’s emotional attachments to their vehicles. It’s really quite something.) In total, 11 flights and 5300 miles.
In that time span, I spent quality time with my family, who I only see maybe once a year. For the rest of the year I’m isolated from them by another 6000 miles. Out of the past ~1430 days, I’ve spent 112 of them with family. That’s around 8% of the last 4 years.
Perhaps for a college student, focused on studying and graduating and figuring out life independent of his or her family, this is a reasonable amount of time with family. Maybe a lot. Everything is relative to one’s experience, right?
Well, in my experience, 92% of the time, I see my family on a screen, or hear their voice over the phone. To me, this is a soul-crushingly dominant amount of time to be alone in the world.
…
Except I’m not.
…
“You should spend time with your peers and increase your knowledge through varied experiences.” — Vision, to his daughter, Viv Vision, in Champions #22
As you might guess, I take “friends are your family away from home” quite literally. So after I said my goodbyes, no, see-you-soon’s to my family, I immediately joined my friends in going to SF Pride and Six Flags, celebrating the 4th of July, watching the Golden State Warriors (congrats) and the SF Giants, and attending Lightning in a Bottle and Audiotistic (major music festival in their respective geographic areas).
In between all of this, I was moving the 300 miles between Berkeley and Santa Barbara. In between leases, I was couch surfing for about 3 weeks. And . . . honestly I don’t have a solid quantitative grasp of how much stuff I was moving. Only too much for a single person.
To top it all off, the Monday right after Audiotistic was my first day at work.
So why am I throwing all these numbers and facts at you? Originally, this story was meant to just reflect on the weekend of Audiotistic. However, I’m not doing the absurdity of it justice without considering the enormity of the entire transitional period beforehand as well. Which was nothing short of a physical whirlwind tearing through an emotional roller coaster. The end of which plummets off a cliff. And then by some miracle lands safely in a soft field of pillows with surprise parachutes.
Certainly, the intent of my most recent trip to the Bay Area — aligning with rest of my time between graduating and working — was to share a wild adventure with my friends before opportunities to have such experiences diminish for me. I set my sights on seeing my closest friends and doing what I love, and let the rest take care of itself.
“Letting the rest take care of itself” was almost a living nightmare, especially when it came to logistical matters. However, when you feel the support of those you reciprocally love, the fear is manageable and you realize you are just a few steps away from living your dreams.
“It’s always traveling . . . and taking trips . . . because you’re exploring new places . . . with new territory, new situations that you can’t predict . . . you’re experiencing the same thing with your friends for the first time ever, there’s just really nothing like that.” — from “Debunking the world’s greatest lie” on The Mission Daily podcast
In conclusion, I consider myself very lucky to have made it through all of this. Graduating, adventuring, and now meaningfully contributing to society. Hopefully, I can carry this forward into my new life here in Santa Barbara. Meeting new people in new places to create new shared memories. But most importantly, I’ll never forget what brought me here, and what prepared me for all of this.
So thank you, everyone. And, I’ll see you sooner than we think. :)
