The People We Choose

There comes a point in life when you begin to understand that having people around you and having your people are two very different things.

When we’re younger, so many of our relationships are chosen for us.

School puts us together.

Our children become friends, so we become friends.

We work beside one another.

We live in the same neighborhood.

We find ourselves at the same soccer games, birthday parties, weddings, committees, dinner tables.

Proximity creates relationship.

And some of those relationships become extraordinary.

Others simply belong to a particular chapter.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started thinking differently about the people I choose to bring close.

Not how many.

Who.

History is not always intimacy

There is something beautiful about being known for a long time.

Someone who remembers you at twenty-five.

Someone who knew your children when they were small.

Someone who was there before the career, the marriage, the move, the loss, the reinvention.

History matters.

But history and intimacy aren’t necessarily the same thing.

We can know someone for thirty years and still only know the version of them we met thirty years ago.

We can see someone every week and never ask what is happening inside them.

And we can meet someone later in life and recognize almost immediately that there is room here for something real.

I’ve stopped believing that the length of a relationship is always the measure of its depth.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it isn’t.

We change

Perhaps that’s what makes relationships so interesting as we get older.

We’re changing.

Hopefully.

The things I wanted years ago aren’t necessarily what I want now.

The things I tolerated may no longer fit.

Things I once thought were terribly important have become almost meaningless to me.

And things I barely noticed before have become some of the most precious parts of my life.

Quiet.

Home.

A table.

A meaningful conversation.

Being around people with whom I can exhale.

When we change, our relationships have to make room for that change too.

Some do beautifully.

There are people who remain curious about us.

They don’t insist that we continue playing the role we’ve always played.

They allow us to surprise them.

They make room for the person we’re becoming.

And we do the same for them.

Those relationships deepen.

Others become harder to inhabit.

Not necessarily because anyone has done something wrong.

Sometimes we’ve simply grown in different directions.

Not every relationship needs to come with us

I think this can be difficult to accept.

Especially if we’re loyal.

We can feel as though every relationship that once mattered must continue to matter in exactly the same way forever.

But perhaps relationships have seasons too.

Some people walk beside us for decades.

Some arrive for a chapter.

Some teach us something.

Some help us survive something.

Some make us laugh during a season when we desperately need to laugh.

Some introduce us to a part of ourselves we had forgotten.

And then sometimes the relationship changes.

That doesn’t make what it was meaningless.

It doesn’t mean there needs to be anger or some dramatic ending.

Sometimes we can simply be grateful for what someone was in our life without requiring them to remain there in the same way.

There is tenderness in that.

Fewer, but deeper

I hear people talk about having smaller circles as they get older.

Usually it’s said with a little sadness.

I’m not sure I see it that way.

Maybe we’re becoming more discerning about where we place our time.

Time feels different now.

An evening feels valuable.

A Sunday afternoon feels valuable.

A seat at my table feels valuable.

My energy feels valuable.

Not in a guarded, transactional way.

Quite the opposite.

Because when we understand the value of those things, we can give them more intentionally.

I don’t want to spend all of my time maintaining a large collection of acquaintances simply so my life appears full.

I’d rather know a few people deeply.

I’d rather sit at a table where the conversation eventually gets past the weather.

I’d rather have someone ask me the second question.

I’d rather be able to say the real thing.

And I want to offer that same kind of friendship in return.

How do you feel after being with someone?

Maybe this is one of the simplest questions.

How do you feel when you leave?

Not whether they impressed you.

Not whether the restaurant was good.

Not whether you laughed enough.

How did you feel?

Did you feel more like yourself?

Did you feel heard?

Were you curious about them?

Did you leave knowing something you didn’t know when you arrived?

Could you disagree without something becoming threatened?

Could there be silence?

Did you feel as though you needed to perform?

Were you exhausted from trying to be understood?

Or did something inside you settle?

I think our bodies often recognize belonging before our minds do.

There are people around whom we brace.

And there are people around whom we exhale.

I’m paying more attention to that.

Choosing goes both ways

Of course, it’s easy to make a list of what we want from other people.

Someone who listens.

Someone curious.

Someone honest.

Someone who shows up.

Someone who celebrates us without comparison.

Someone who can sit beside us when life isn’t beautiful.

Someone who lets us change.

But friendship asks the same of us.

Am I that person?

Do I remember?

Do I check in?

Do I ask another question?

Do I make space for someone else’s story without turning it into mine?

Do I celebrate the person they’re becoming even if their life begins to look different from mine?

Do I make the invitation?

Do I show up?

We can’t spend our lives waiting to find extraordinary friends without asking whether we’re becoming one.

The courage to choose

There can be guilt around all of this.

Around saying no.

Around not accepting every invitation.

Around recognizing that a relationship no longer feels reciprocal.

Around wanting something deeper.

But choosing our relationships intentionally doesn’t mean becoming exclusive or closed.

We can be warm to many people.

We can welcome people.

We can have beautiful conversations with strangers.

We can share meals and stories and moments with people who may never become part of our inner lives.

Not everyone we enjoy needs to become one of our closest people.

That’s okay.

The door can be open without every person having a key.

And keep leaving room

This may be the part I don’t want to lose as I get older.

Discernment can become a wall if we’re not careful.

We can become so comfortable with our people, our homes, our routines and our little worlds that we stop leaving room for anyone new.

I don’t want that either.

Because some of the people who may know us most deeply might not have arrived yet.

I love that thought.

There may still be someone we haven’t met who will one day sit at our table and become part of our story.

A friendship we couldn’t have had at thirty because we hadn’t become these people yet.

So perhaps the answer isn’t to close the circle.

It’s to tend to it carefully while leaving a chair or two open.

The people we choose

This little series began with a question:

How many people really know you?

Then came another:

Are we truly listening to one another?

And another:

Are we courageous enough to let ourselves be known?

Maybe this is where those questions lead.

Toward the people with whom we’re willing to practice all of it.

The people we listen to.

The people we let listen to us.

The people we keep discovering.

The people who keep discovering us.

The people with whom we can laugh about absolutely nothing one minute and talk about everything the next.

The people who don’t require the polished version.

The people who make us want to put our phones away and stay at the table a little longer.

Maybe a rich life isn’t measured by how many people know our name.

Maybe it’s measured, in part, by the handful of people who know our heart.

Choose them well.

Love them well.

And always leave a little room at the table for someone you haven’t met yet.