The Power of Surrounding Yourself With Like-Minded People
And 2 ways to find them
In the early summer of 2016, I started a process of healing. I had gone through a breakup, followed by a depression, and I was now starting to do and feel better. But there was one eerie feeling I couldn’t get rid of: my loneliness.
In my healing, I had started to read up on psychology and philosophy. And the new tools and input they provided helped lessen the depressive feelings. But it didn’t do much for my loneliness. It made it worse, initially. When I hung out with my group of friends, the accumulation of new knowledge made me feel alien to them. I mean, we had never talked about such things before, and it felt like our worldviews were apart.
I wanted to belong. But the polarization was too big. And so, in my desperation, I figured I needed new friends (that seemed easier than breaking the existing group-norms). However, that wasn’t done just like that either. I tried to think of people I knew with a philosophical inclination, but I couldn’t come up with anyone. And I couldn’t just walk up to strangers and invite them to my “Vienna Circle”.
I felt at loss. But as I kept researching into my new topics of interest, I started to encounter articles and videos with a more personal touch. Instead of the pure, sober information, they…
