Being busy is the new being alive. And this feeling of being “too busy” or “too rushed” can leave people feeling highly isolated. I’ve felt that way many times.
It manifests in statements like:
“I never see my friends…”
“They don’t want to hear from me.”
“I haven’t seen them in years!”
“I don’t think they like me very much…”
Let me tell you right here and now…these things that we tell ourselves are almost never true (but they sure are convincing!)
I am going to tell you a story that happened to me the other day.
As I think I’ve mentioned a few times before, my husband and I will be going on a trip to Japan this coming summer and we are VERY excited. But one morning, we thought of something even more exciting; we have friends in Japan!
Now these people haven’t seen us in almost a decade, so “friends” is a term we worried about using, but never-the-less, the two of us reached out to them and received unexpected, equally excited replies back.
When my husband and I first talked about reaching out to our friends we said things like:
“Do you think they even want to hear from us?”
“Do you think they remember us?”
“Are we even connected on social anymore?”
Well…I’m glad that we took the leap, because now we have three friends willing to show us around personally. One lives in Hiroshima and two are in the Tokyo vicinity, which is perfect because those are two of our chosen destinations.
The point I wanted to make with this post is that, yes, the people you worry that you have spent too much time ignoring DO want to hear from you.
Yes, you are still interesting to people from your past.
Yes, you can almost always reconnect.
If you have been worrying about contacting an old friend or connection, just do it! What’s the worst they can do? Ignore you? You already weren’t talking regularly anyway.
Sometimes…winning is as easy as typing “hello.”