Wintering

We need people who acknowledge that we can’t always hang on. That sometimes everything breaks. Short of that, we need to perform those functions for ourselves: to give ourselves a break when we need it and to be kind. To find our own grit, in our own time.

If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.

This is the opposite of caring. I’ve never believed—as others do—that social media is a place entirely constructed of fake lives and fake friendships, but I do think it’s another place to beware. There’s a collector’s mentality online; our social worth is given a single blunt number. We have to make sure that we’re not fooled by it. We have to make the same assessments that we always did about the quality of those connections, their individual meanings to us and the nurture that they can realistically offer us. Just as with the physical world, many of these friends will melt away at the first sign of trouble. The only difference is that the numbers are bigger online, and our missed connections feel more visible.