Fresh Truths and Where to Find them:

You're a person who is living and morphing and moving through different eras of your interests.

You want to rebuild a friendship from the past...

You're going to need to pull your ideas about this friendship: Into the Present.

The first thing Alvin's going to need to do when interacting with Enzo is figure out who Present-Day Enzo is

We're gonna do this in two steps.

The extra step is to cut the awkwardness.

Step 1: How have you changed?

Most people don't do homework in courses, including me when I'm a student, so I won't get mad if you don't do this.

But for anyone who wants to cut the awkwardness even further, write out the date you last were close chums with your old friend in a blank document.

Then write out a heading for every year between then and now.

And in each year, just jot down at least one thing that happened to you, good or bad, that your friend doesn't know about.

If it's been a long time, you might be amazed to realize just how many milestones of your life that they missed.

Step 2: How have they changed?

This is just a visual, you don't have to actually fill out this part of the homework, but visualize it all the same.

Now imagine them filling out that form.

Imagine all of the milestones in their life that you were not there for.

This is not an indictment! Remember if your friendship atrophied because of something other than a fight, then nobody's to blame; this kind of thing happens all the time. People grow without checking in on one another. It's okay.

Active Questions lead to Fresh Truths

You've missed a lot.

Oh well.

They missed a lot too; even if you didn't fill out the list of yearly milestones they weren't there for, you have a sense of it at least.

That sense of divide is the awkwardness.

It's time for you to reconnect and start filling in the information you're both missing about each other's lives.

However, and this is the hack we're going over today, it's very important that you be open to the idea of learning about their life more than being motivated to update them on everything that's happened to you.

It's still important that you give them updates on what's happened; otherwise you'll eventually come off as withholding.

But for the beginning, if you're the one who is going to bridge the gap, the fastest thing I have seen lead to a fresh exchange of information between two old friends is to have a common activity together.

If you are lucky and you still have the same hobbies, then just go do that.

However, I still suggest reading on, because I have friends who play video games and branched off into different video games over a decade apart, and that's just enough of a divide to require this next step. So even if it seems on the surface like you still hang out in the same way, actually check because you might have specialized enough that you won't be able to just hop right back into your old activities together, and you'll need to do something else instead.

The key here is to go the distance to wherever their interests lie.

Enzo and Alvin used to play games together after classes at the academy.

When Alvin approaches Enzo to try and rebuild the friendship, he tentatively asks, "Played any good games lately?"

But it's not good news.

In fact it churns Alvin's stomach.

"Oh yeah," chirps Enzo, "I've been really into Sawbones the Catman lately, have you played it?"

Ooooh no!

Alvin has not played Sawbones the Catman. Alvin has seen the poster for the game though, and it does not look appealing to him.

This is maybe the worst possible scenario of a previous shared interest: someone who took your shared interest into some direction you hate.

They're practically rivals now!

And this brings up all sorts of insecurities about past differences they'd had between them.

The awkwardness hasn't gotten smaller, it's gotten bigger!

Oh no!

Alvin has a choice to make.

He's in a quandary.

He'd like to be pals with Enzo again, only the attempt at a shared interest has failed.

In order for them to have a shared interest, not only will Alvin have to play a game he hasn't played before, he'll have to play a game he was pretty sure he wouldn't enjoy!

It's worth noting that you should never betray yourself and do something for a friend that actually goes against your life's principles. That being said, in this case we're talking about somebody playing a video game that they might not like, and that's less about giving up who he is and more about getting off his high horse.

Alvin decides to give the game a try.

He has two ways he could go about this.

He can either play the game, hoping that it's wrong, looking for everything that will reinforce his bias against the game...

OR

He can try to find ANYTHING in this game that he actually likes, so that it isn't a waste of his time. It's important that if he does this that it not be a token favor; he's gotta actually be changed for the better, if this is going to be a new shared interest.