Kay:
Alright, we are pulling in once again to the dock here on ship week.
Shi:
Yep. We are in friendship harbor, and we are excited to talk about the ship that I think a lot of us find a lot of comfort in and that is in friendships.
Kay:
Now, one of the things that I love about Shila, and I is that we have two different sides of the friendship spectrum. Now, Shila is incredibly social, and I’ll let you talk about how your beautiful relationships came forward with your like trillion best friends.` Kay here, I have like one best friend outside of my sister and that’s pretty much it and I’m definitely more of an introverted human. So, friendships are both deep for us but have different meanings and they play out differently in our lives.
Shi:
Well, coming at you, Professor Shi here for a minute. What we know is that humans thrive in groups and that they thrive on connection and that the impact of even just one close connection with someone that you would consider a friend gives enough of a sense of belonging to reduce suicide rates by incredible amounts and feelings of loneliness and self-harm and suicidal thoughts and all of those things. So, whether it’s one friend or a dozen just having someone under the friendship spectrum is really important to your health overall as a human being and that wellbeing. But yes, you’re right Kay, I have a large group of friends. We had 11 bridesmaids from a wonderful group of women that I started going to school with when I was nine years old and by the time we were in high school, there were nine of us. We have a title, we have numbers, we have nicknames. There’s a secret initiation. Just kidding, there’s not one of those but we’re called the Ditz crew and through the ups and downs we’ve been there for each other, and I’ve always really enjoyed having this close-knit of nearly 10 women as my friends.
Kay:
It’s really amazing to have seen that play out in your life too. But man, that is a busy set of friends for somebody like me who’s a little bit more from a networking perspective, the introverted side. It’s funny. I was just telling somebody last night how oftentimes in networking situations where we’ve got to talk to people, I cling to Shila for dear life. Because while extroversion is an easy thing for me, I am definitely more naturally introverted. And so, I have one very close friend outside of Shila.
Shi:
Shout out to Victoria.
Kay:
Hey Victoria. Yes. I was about to say her name is Victoria. She’s amazing. We’ve been best friends since we were 15 years old and have carried on a relationship that we’re very proud of, and it’s taken a lot of intention over the years to manifest and keep that relationship going. And to me, it seems crazy to do that times 10, but it’s amazing how the idea of friendship plays out in both of our lives.
Shi:
It does and you know, the 10 of us, there’s definitely pairs off and other little trios and such, but we are a collective and we communicate in a collective and I think that’s been part of the strength for us. But I think that idea of intention that you just brought forward, Kay, is probably the most important piece in differentiating between the–I want to call them–proxy friends. You take a class with somebody, you become friends over the semester.
Kay:
Between places.
Shi:
Yeah. Right. You’re friendly for a while because you have a shared experience, or you work together somewhere. But as time fades that doesn’t really continue forward because neither one of you brought enough intentional energy forward to progress that. And there’s nothing wrong with that because our life needs those kinds of friendships in our life. Then there is that other side that Kay and I are talking about with those close friendships that go across time because you intentionally invest in that time with those friends.
Kay:
Yep. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that Victoria and I have gotten in fights. We’ve had to work things out. We’ve had to have conversations and make compromises and find time for each other when we’re busy and make the effort for that particular friendship. If you have the expectation that friendship is a lot of work, sometimes it is and that’s okay and I think there is an expectation that friendship’s going to be perfect, right? Kind of like the first six months of a relationship…
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…but then forever and it is like any other relationship, which means it takes upkeep.
Shi:
It does and it’s not always easy to spend the money and commit the time to go travel on a friend’s trip or go see someone or especially if you’ve got friends that move away as they do, as you get older, then it really takes intentional planning and commitment. But boy, is it worth it and we love how Michelle Obama really underscores this as well in her book, of course, that we love, and you’ve heard us feature before our book “Becoming.” But her having a really strong group of friends that she met primarily in college, and they’ve intentionally kept it forward. You can just see how they’ve been this level of support and this ability to provide that sense of security and belonging no matter what, how important that can be for people. And I just love the way she shared that, and the studies show, the research shows friendships are really important. So be it one or be it many here’s to your friendships today as we pull out of this harbor and into our last kind of meta harbor of the week.
Kay:
Oh-ooh.
