Birds of Different Feathers Can Flock Together by Noah Wizard

So some people were crap to me back in the day. Enough people treated me poorly that I started to get wary of new people.

But I’m not introverted enough for that to be a good strategy; I need new people.

And limiting myself only to the people who I knew meant that I had very few opportunities for the friendships I needed to just feel fulfilled as a person.

When I was younger, I would try to make friends with everybody, but I was bad at it.

It’s not that with enough training you can force people to treat you better, but as we grow older and skill up in social skills, we can talk things out with people. Set up better boundaries.

“I didn’t like that you said that.”

We gain the ability to interact with people who are very different from us, but still be civil.

Friends even.

When I was younger I didn’t know how to resolve our differences, so I just kept my mouth shut, trying to keep peace at any cost.

All it did was make me resentful.

You have to speak up; but there are many more ways to speak up in anger and frustration and make things worse, than there are calm ways to discuss difficult conflict.

But a bird and a pig can become friends, despite originating from different worlds, and having vastly different needs and considerations.

The world is going to eventually only consist of these bird-pig friendships because as we each become more specialized we’re becoming less and less like each other. We will all have specific needs to take into account.

First you have to figure out what kind of animal you are, and if you can swim or if you can fly, if you breathe the water or breathe the air.

It’s okay for everyone to interact differently with the world, but as we grow up, it becomes more and more our responsibility to understand what our specific needs are, so that we can be cordial about getting them met.

Very soon, no one will agree, there will be as many species as there are people; no two alike any longer.

We can make that work.

Each person becomes aware of where they’re coming from, and we start to integrate our social habits to include: “Hey, here’s what I’d need for this friendship to not swallow me alive.”

But when I was young, I’d make friends with someone who saw the world very differently from me, who had very different needs than I had for the friendship to work, and I’d just pretend like I was the same as them and wasn’t drowning, on the inside.

Drowning isn’t friendship.

Friendship feels like something else.

Being able to breathe, is like a definite friendship prerequisite.