Spectators

The Disappearance of Abundant Connection

College is an experience that is not fully appreciated until you are spat out the other side of it. The immediacy of adulting catches everyone by surprise at some point or another and college just expedites the process.

When I was sitting in the crowd on graduation day, I came to the realization of something a little bit scary. Sat next to a few friends corralled by a sea of strangers, the thought surprised me. I leaned over to the rest of the row of grads (mainly the ones I was friends with) and said, “We will never be in a place with people all our age again.” Their eyes pointed up as if to look at their tassels (pre-commencement) in confusion. Then suddenly it clicked. They felt it. The ease of access to community and socialization is about to have the rug ripped from underneath it. And these last three hours of sitting in this crowd is our last chance to soak up every last drop of this comically large community.

Unlike most college grads, I did not spend much of my time on campus. My journey began with one year of abundance living in a dorm at FAU with my best friend. On the rugby team I immediately had access to a close group of friends. I began leading tutoring sessions for anatomy and physiology. That was the first real sense of growing up.

I ended up transferring to UCF soon after and was met with a whole new set of challenges.

I was a commuter student at one of the largest schools in the world. And the opportunity to live with my parents gave me financial security dissimilar to most college kids. But those advantages paled in comparison to the hardest part.

I had no community.

A college kid in a town too expensive for young homeowners and too far from school for students. My friends from high school had migrated across the country. The population around me was either high schoolers or millennials old enough to be my parents.

My exposure to a lack of socialization was stark. I connected with the friends I could online. Spending my evenings after school and work talking to my friends while playing video games. I will forever be grateful for that level of connection when all other means of it were gone. But I was still noticing that my life mostly was devoid of in person meaningful companionship. So I began my search for something.

I was met with 2 major limiting factors. My fear of perception being one snuck up on me and the other being that all the previous communities have migrated online.

The internet has done many impactful things. But I fear how it has changed the way we connect is the most consequential one. Transitioning to online communication and means of entertainment has quickly satiated our desire for connection. It gives us just enough. Enough to feel connected without actually being close.

I am not saying there is no place for online connection. Just that real physical socialization is a drug that can never be truly replaced. Nothing compares to what true human bonds can bring. And our simulation of it ensures that the need feels as though it’s been met but never really has. Making it so those who are looking for their circle will find emptiness.

My fear of perception is an added issue that I face, and I don’t think that I am the only one with this issue. The feeling of knowing what I am doing will be seen by others and possibly judged is one that all humans have faced throughout time. Now though it has become monstrously overbearing. Growing up now it is more apparent than ever that there are always more eyes than you think. All you do can be recorded without your consent and shown to the eyes of people you will never meet. When you already have natural fear, you don’t need other means of engineered phobias looming over your head. It breeds complacency, inaction, and compounds risk aversion.

Those risks for me came in the form of looking for new experiences. I started simple with trying to talk to people who seemed close to my age in the gym. I was either wrong, they were entirely uninterested, or uninteresting themselves.

My next attempt was to meet others in coffee shops. I had some better luck. An interesting conversation here or there but the reality of trying to convince someone to ‘risk’ their time to make an in person friendship was one I did not expect to be so prominent. It is almost like pitching an event or giving someone the incentive to give hanging out a shot. The inevitable “let me know” never comes to fruition. Leaving you either sitting on a phone that never buzzes, or sending different notifications into a void of unresponsive texters.

I am not writing this to complain. Instead I think just acknowledging how hard it is to make a connection is something that is important. A reminder to myself and anybody who gives me the grace of reading my words that making those bonds can be difficult.

This road of new challenges that await the new age of adults will not be easy.

Instead I would like to offer sympathy for all of us who are looking hard into making a connection that seems to elude us the more we try. Maybe our efforts are the issue. Or maybe we have just been unlucky enough to only find those who are conditioned with avoidance, and not yet those who feel as we might.

It was years ago I heard this response to a question as old as time. The question was “why do humans marry?” I thought it was silly. Very silly. The answer the speaker said was “amongst other things, I think we simply just want a spectator”. One of the most simple evolutionary questions of all time was now infinitely more complicated in my mind. I was thinking that all humans needed was reproduction and survival. I completely forgot that I was one. My life was filled with ups and downs that felt as if the universe itself was of the creation of my own mind. How small I really am. But at the same time, how incredibly human. And so is everyone else around me.

We all want a spectator. Someone to validate our experience of this odd existence. Someone to create and reminisce on the memories during this time. A mind to test and reflect our perspectives and insights on new interesting things. A place to return to with a story. That is what we are depriving ourselves of when we choose to disconnect from each other.

I think it would be foolish to keep living like I’m still a child. But I also refuse to accept that the joy of genuine connection belongs only to that season of life. I will keep challenging my fear of perception. Keep starting awkward conversations with strangers. Hoping that one day this stops being an observation and starts being a story worth telling.

This isn’t easy for any of us. And I doubt I’m the only one who feels it.

We all just want spectators. Go find yours.