I’ve suffered from social anxiety all my life and usually feel sick before I go anywhere social. It troubles my illusional self image as a person who is cool and under control in most situations. Only age has allowed me to see that getting hyper when I was very young and the consequent drop the other way afterwards, has led me to adopt this mythical persona. Anyway, that is just background to the positive sides of a couple of social situations and the magic of the weird connections between us all.
I’m writing this because I enjoyed someone’s 60th Birthday party last night (thank you Sarah) and it made me think of another group that I chat to, who all met via looking after cycle paths for the National Cycle Path people. We have kept on chatting and meeting up long afterwards and have been on cycling and other holidays together. The chats make me smile and laugh.
Leaving them for a minute, the reason for the party last night is a social worker. One group of invitees were social workers who walk/cycle/holiday together. Of course there are partners as well, who often walk/cycle/holiday too. There was a crossover with badminton players and of course there were family and other friends. Most of us had probably come across each other at previous events. What struck me was the variety of different connections there were before that. It struck me as a positive in our fracturing times.
Before we had even got into the venue, we said hello to another set of arrivals of the social work/walk/cycle set. One of these is the sister of another member of that set, who I met with one of my own cycle path group on a ride from Morecambe to Bridlington. After saying hello, I ended up chatting to one of the others about their imminent month long cycle trip from St Malo to Nice before people started to organise us.
The party was a murder dinner occasion and I then ended up chatting to the organiser because of my own experience of writing/running/acting in them. We were put on a table with two old friends and a newer member of the walking/holidaying group and her partner. At some point I heard Barrow-in-Furness mentioned. It turned out that, from the age of seven, the newer walker had lived and been to school in Barrow. My dad was born in Barrow, as was my grandad who worked in the shipyard from age 12 to 70. This couple met when the other one was working for the shipyard as a technical illustrator. He was from the Wirral by the way. My cycling friend from the Morecambe/Bridlington went to school in Barrow too.
In the follow up to all this I found out that he had trained as an illustrator in Blackpool and in fact had digs on the same road as the first hotel/boarding house that my parents owned there at a similar time. He also made furniture, so we had that in common. As my other old table friend runs his own business mending organs and keyboards, we were in a very practical and technical focus group of our own.
My mixture of age and experience have made me more at ease on such occasions and got me into the habit of finding out people’s stories. I have also learned to open up about problems such as anxiety, without burdening people, and this has often allowed me to make connections to younger people. There were some there last night. We didn’t end up chatting much but we hugged and acknowledged each other because we’ve chatted about things before.
There were people there last night with family backgrounds in the Indian subcontinent, England, Scotland, Ireland (and the hybrid Northern Ireland), Wales, Poland and almost certainly a whole variety of other places. My new illustrator friend reminded us that people from the Wirral are often keen to stress that they are not Scousers (a Scandinavian derived term for people from Liverpool) and that got me thinking about connections rather than fractures. Some people at the party were born and bred in the same locale where they still live, where some have never lived anywhere where people didn’t think they were from elsewhere. Whether locally, nationally or around the world, plenty have moved around and made new connections. Groups there often didn’t know other groups and yet the chat was happy and varied.
Like with my cycle path friends, the key is looking for the connections rather than the divisions. Try to look for the positive experiences in your life to pass on and listen to other people’s stories too. I’ve managed to pick up stories from people all over the world and they have become part of my story to tell as well. I’ve never been a great fan of longevity but I look forward to the smile from creating my own new experiences and to sharing other people’s as well.
Thanks again Sarah and Dav