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Last week, I was privileged to take a few days off and go away with six of my good friends from business school. All from different countries, living in different countries, facing different life circumstances, making different life choices. Some I had seen last year, some I had not seen in close to 10 years. The connection between us? Connection.
Picking up where we left off
I was fortunate that Portugal is considered relatively central when your friends live across Europe, Australia and both coasts of the US. As the first traveller arrived at my house, she went straight to business:
“Let’s start with an update, tell me when you moved here and how is life since.”
It did not feel weird at all. I was excited to share my news, and she was excited to share hers. No guilt about the times we did not call, the chances we did not speak, the events we did not meet. Just the joy of being ready to embark at a long weekend together after so long apart. The conversations flowed, and curiosity was king (or queen) in allowing us all to find each other and pick up the conversations (and our lives) where we had left them off the last time around. Had you looked at us outside-in, you would have thought we hung out all the time.
Connection was dormant, not lost.
As we drove our long journey up to Serra da Estrela, the connection was alive and kicking. At times, I had information overload as I focused on my co-pilot while also having conversations in the backseat. After one of our stops, we even rotated seats as people got re-acquainted with each other’s lives. Like we were back in school, eager to get to know our desk partner!
Striving for more
Our first intention for the weekend was to celebrate a birthday. However, it was clear from the beginning that we were all eager to also allow ourselves this opportunity to reconnect. After the first baby steps of catching up on daily lives, the conversations quickly turned into a deeper reflection and an opportunity to connect to each other. Quickly, the word that came to mind was sisterhood.
Despite different countries, careers, families and choices, our shared humanity remained at the core of our connection.
As we took time to go deeper into difficult topics, it was heart-warming to see the way in which we opened up. All of us, without exception, were willing to admit struggles, share victories, voice doubts, and offer curious advice. All, from a place of love and friendship. And all from a place of openness and willingness to grow with someone who was far and yet so close.
How can it be that years go by and one makes friendships in so many different places, and yet you still go back to a few anchors that you feel like you don’t have to explain very much, and the understanding and empathy are still there? Perhaps those friendships were built at a formative moment in our lives. Or perhaps some people simply witness enough of our story that they never truly become strangers again.
Connection to yourself
The other beautiful part about being comfortable in your friendships is that it provides space to also look inside yourself. What surprised me was that reconnecting with others also created space to reconnect with ourselves. It seems contradictory that we have not seen each other for so long, and yet we spend time connecting with ourselves. That was done by design. Arguably, it is an area where most of us don’t tend to spend much time or energy.
It is a bit scary to look inside.
We benefited from structured prompts and questions to reflect on where we were in our lives, and did one of my favourite reflection exercises, a Circle of Life. Because, at the end of the day, life is so multi-dimensional that it takes a visual representation to be able to capture the reality of what we put into each pie. And for our analytical minds, structure is always best. I can’t recommend check-ins and goal checking enough!
Bravely, one by one, we ventured into looking inside ourselves and taking stock of different areas of our lives. We were authentic about where things needed adjustment (none of us overachievers seem to have much restraint around self-criticism), and also about where the north was unclear. Needless to say, it was not always comfortable, but it was no doubt connected to our deepest thoughts, fears and emotions.
Sometimes, it can look very difficult to think about building a connection with others. It looks even more difficult to think about connecting with yourself. Life happens, and we get distracted by the passage of time, often forgetting our deepest need: connection. These five days reminded me that human connection is not measured by frequency. Some connections survive distance, silence and time. They wait patiently until we are ready to pick up where we left off. And sometimes, through reconnecting with others, we find our way back to ourselves.