In this episode, we explore why we need to remember the friends and allies we already have - and how to find new ones too.
It’s been hard, the past few years, for almost all of us. Whether it’s pandemic lockdowns, the loss of loved-ones to the reasons behind those lockdowns, the loss of so much else to the idiocies of those cursed covert-crybabies all around the world, or the seeming fragmentation of almost everything, it can be hard to keep going at all. Above all, it seems, a relentless erosion of meaning, and the concomitant loneliness and isolation from the world: that makes
Yet there is a way to recover and rebuild. It’s called friends and allies.
Okay, I’m perhaps not the best person to be talking about this. For a start, I’d have to admit that I’m somewhat of a natural recluse, living alone, often hiding away from the world as much as I can:
There are reasons why that happens, of course. One of the more obvious ones in recent times has been all of the lockdowns here in Australia - and I don’t seem to have realised that they’re mostly over now. The obvious result, though, is that I’ve lost contact with far too many friends and allies - and I need to find a way to reconnect.
Not being allowed to travel may have ended, but it’s morphed instead into not being able to travel. Too costly now, in too many senses. A move to a different town in a different country in the midst of this mess hasn’t exactly helped either. And my main source of social connections - playing live-music in folk-clubs and the like - has been all but wiped off the map. Sure, there’s still the internet, of course - but that isn’t the same as real human contact. Too many barriers along the way.
And I know I’m not alone in facing this aloneness: almost everyone I know is struggling with it too. So where to start in breaking out of this box? Where to start?
In my own case, my work is that I work with ideas - in particular, ideas about the future, and how to make the future happen. I develop them, write about them, teach them where I can. But as any working-futurist will know, there’s often a lot of fear about change; and hence, no matter how urgent the need for that change may be, there’s often an intense, seething ‘anti-want’ for it. Tricky…
To make it work, we need those allies. Who aren’t there any more, because we’ve lost contact with them.
Oops…
And then that crushing aloneness comes crashing back. How do we deal with that?
Short-answer: find a way past the apparent ‘anti-want’. Find a way past our own fears too. Find a way to build or rebuild those connections with those allies old and new.
How to do that? Well, here’s one way to do it.
Whenever you’re presenting new ideas to others, or even just presenting yourself amongst people you don’t yet know, then you’re on a stage - either a metaphoric stage at least, or even a physical one like this:
When you’re up on that stage, it’s often all too easy to fall into feeling that you’re alone and lost and scared, that no-one’s listening, that no-one wants to know. It’s especially easy to do that if you’re head-down hiding behind your notes and mumbling into the microphone.
If you get into that state, remember that being up on the stage is the safest place to be: there’s no-one behind you, there’s no-one up there to put you down. So instead, look up, look outward, and see who’s there:
There may be no-one, of course: in which case, try again some other time. Usually, though, just notice that whoever’s there is an ally. They’re there because they’re listening; they’re there because they want to belong, want to be part of the story. So often we’re right in the midst of allies, and we don’t even notice it…
There’s a central point here. If you have something to say, be interesting; if someone else has something to say, be interested.
And it’s not hard to be interesting, either: all you have to do is be yourself. Your real self, that is: not the one that’s hidden behind a corporate mask, or behind supposed social rules, but the one that can help you show your passion, your purpose. That’s the one who’s interesting: the others, uh, often aren’t…
Another way to connect with allies is simply to share the stage. Or be enough of an ally to others that they’ll invite you to share their stage, their story:
And if no-one’s listening, then you have two choices: either explore yourself enough to find your ‘interesting’; or go find another group, another place, where people are interested. Or do both of those choices, of course. It may take some effort to get there, but that effort is definitely worthwhile.
If you place your effort on ‘be interesting’ you’ll often find that this itself will tend to bring the allies in allies. You don’t have to do any heavy marketing to bring them to you - in fact doing that often drives people away - but instead just create enough of a story about what you’re interested-in such that others who are interested in that story will find you.
Which also brings up the other way to find those allies: be interested. In anything and everything that does interest you. (Don’t fake it, though, or you’ll end up with the wrong allies…) Being interested brings you to people who are interesting: that’s how it works. And that’s what brings the allies, too.
Yet if those are the potential allies, who are friends? Short-answer: friends are allies who stick around and stay close. To find friends, you need to find allies first. Simple as that, really.
Insightful thoughts, Tom. Thank you for sharing them. Over the last couple of years, I experienced a number of times both ways, which led me to think about the word "enough": interesting enough and interested enough to take a specific action (whatever threshold stands behind enough). The other aspect is the oscillation of interest over time and across different contexts. As I sense, our motivational drivers are modulating these oscillations.
A hands-on example is my "interestedness" in your work and ideas shared on the Tetradian blog and here on Small Changes: for years, I was interested enough in your blog posts to curate, read, digest/outline, and visually map them out, while trying to understand the bigger picture of your mesh/network of thinking around RBPEA, while lately, given the changes or (temporary) suspension of some of my interests, my interest faltered in Tetradian posts, while I find most of your Small Changes posts enjoyable interesting. So much so that I'm often wondering how I could arouse other people's interest in your thinking besides occasionally sharing some of your posts here and there with a limited number of people (while I'm in a similar social situation as you).
Sometimes I think that Substack is more than just a walled garden; it is a walled graveyard where many valuable ideas end up dying. Same with LinkedIn comment threads, which are often insightful, but at the same time, hard to find and, when finally found, hard to follow. Other times I'm contemplating along the "the medium is the message" line: how your writings, considering how foundational they are, could be made more accessible in addition to the current "plain text"? In this sense, I greatly enjoyed your YouTube video series, especially those involving hand sketching or Lego figurines.
Amanda Palmer reminds us that it's important to ask. Benjamin Franklin also turned an enemy into a friend by asking them to lend an obscure and valuable book. Friends and allies ask for help, ask for time, ask for insight. Asking should be part of the formula.