#I’ve been seeing inklings of what this post describes but people tend to blame the awful evil west for forcing poor Japan into things

[moophinz]

I await the day Yakuza gets fully absorbed into the culture wars by people who have never played it and people who have but act like they haven’t and then dons the new name…

Wokuza

[a-travels]

taken: 10 aug, 2017 Tian Tan Buddha, Lantau Island, Hong Kong

a soul for a soul

When anyone has asked me about my role in any relationship, a friendship, family relationship, a hypothetical partnership, I tend to refer to the idea of equality. No matter where in the social structure you fall, I think it all works best upon the supposition that everyone is considered equal. Equality can mean many things. It’s tough to articulate what I actually mean, but I don’t think I really have to. The best way I can describe my thoughts on it, is through the idea of give-and-take, though I imagine most people theoretically structure their relationships similarly anyway.

When I say that, I don’t mean the concept of a transactional relationship. I think to put a price tag, theoretical or literal, on anything, especially a relationship, breeds a sense of expectation, lost value, and ultimately toxicity. Just like you pay a thousand dollars for your brand new phone or $150 for your brand new Airpods, you expect some feature set or value proposition commensurate to the retail price you paid. Now, even comparing a relationship to a gadget or some ripoff headphones (I won’t detail my ire with Airpods, but know the well runs deep there) is a bit unfair, but in this case, I think the analogy works. 

If you expect your friends to throw you a birthday party after you threw them one, or if you are thinking of the way someone owes you something, that would fall under the idea of transactional friendship. That’s not to say there isn’t value to a friendship, but it’s essentially invaluable, in that there is indeed value there but it can’t be quantified or described. I think though, there is a clear distinction between transactional friendship and reciprocity. The former would stem out of some kind of perceived debt or ledger in the relationship that has to be evened out. The latter stems from magnanimous roots⸺someone did something for you and you want to do something for them in return, not because you necessarily need to even things out, but to make them feel as deserved or happy as they made you feel.

So I guess going back to the equals thing, yes I treat my friends as equals to myself, but that doesn’t always mean I’ve received the same treatment back. Before you think this post is just my spite writing, I assure you it very much isn’t. In the same breath of identifying my equal, I also find it best to not set expectations on most things, and if I do, not to set them too high. Yes, there are exceptions. I was ridiculously excited for Avengers: Infinity War and deliriously excited for Endgame (fortunately my expectations were met and exceeded on both accounts). The same happens for Star Wars movies and the new Mandalorian show, as well as some new video games occasionally, but I’m sure you sense the trend that my expectations tend to center more around non-human things. 

Yeah, that probably sounds a bit pathetic that I expect more out of movies or video games or television than actual people. Maybe it feeds into that idea that I’m just a kid like I mentioned in the last post. I think my only counter is that even if my expectations are let down on a movie, or a game, or a TV show. I can just avoid it, not buy it, not support it. It’s a material thing that I have control over consuming and I choose to psyche myself up for it. You can’t ever really avoid someone, and a relationship is not a material commodity. It isn’t something you can buy or sell, and it certainly isn’t something you can always control. If you can’t control it, then in my mind, it’s best to not expect anything of it. I say that not out of cynicism or fear, but because it’s unfair to the other person to have to live up to your standards and unfair to yourself for thinking you can always control your role in a relationship. 

Something I’ve been grappling with semi-regularly (since high school) is that idea of reciprocity, and distinguishing it myself from transactionality (← is that a word? idk whatever). Reciprocity is tricky because it very much feeds into the idea of a give-and-take that I see relationships as. Maybe not physically giving objects, or money, or whatever, but particularly energy. You, in a relationship, put in your time and more importantly, energy, into maintaining a healthy relationship and the idea is that the other end will do the same, at least under the supposition of equality. On one hand, I truly believe I shouldn’t expect things of someone, including friends; and yet on the other, I’ve found myself more recently wondering if I should expect someone to “pay their dues” or rather demonstrate their contribution, energy-wise, into the relationship, as a bare minimum. It was something I started wondering about in high school, mostly because I made the plans I coordinated, invited people, ordered food, hosted and whatnot. I enjoyed it, but mostly because I set the terms, I planned things I like and I got to see my friends. Win all around, right? Maybe not so.

I first started questioning my approach when one of my good friends from high school suddenly grew cold and distant from me. I had no idea why and tried to figure out what I did wrong and what I could do to make it better. I wracked my brain and bothered our mutual friends for any inkling, anything at all that may lead to the answer and ultimately found nothing. It was disappointing, to say the least, but had me questioning a lot of things about the nature of friendship and my relationship with other people. I had mostly invited this friend over to hang out, meet up whatever, but had never noticed him do the same on his end. It made me realize that maybe my investment, across the board, was more one-sided than I thought. I did move at the beginning of high school, and I made most of my friends end of my junior year into senior year. I didn’t have the history or connection from childhood some of my other friends did. Maybe I just felt closer to others than they did to me. I didn’t know. The only way I could rationalize it and find a way to prove my theory was to step back and test my theory by not planning anything directly. 

And so first winter break from college, I did just that. I tried to not reach out to people myself to meet. It was hard to not reach to my phone and just shoot a message to meet. I know that sounds stupid, but my friend group has never truly been stable, having moved around so much as a kid. In hindsight, I may have just been worried that my friends would just continue their lives and friendships without me, so I always took the initiative to reach out. Regardless, I held to my little experiment over the break and the outcome was what anticipated. I did indeed have a few people reach out and ask to meet or hang out. If they did, I definitely helped plan, but I did not plan everything like I normally did. Invariably though, a lot of people didn’t reach out, either because they did move on as I feared, or they forgot, or they were busy and didn’t have time. Whatever the reason, that break didn’t necessarily help allay any of my concerns. 

Just as before, I found myself in that situation far too often towards the latter half of college. Especially with the context of alcohol and parties, I definitely felt more urgency in crafting plans because I knew then, I at least had some opportunity to have fun and not feel awkward or out of place. More often, it was easy to blame schoolwork or incompatible schedules when I couldn’t connect with someone, but again my concern never truly left. It’s still something I wrestle with by myself⸺do I reach out, do I not? I genuinely invite any advice on this matter because I still don’t know if I’ve fully figured out the nuance of reciprocity in friendship. Maybe I’m just being overly clingy and dramatic and I should just revert to expecting nothing from anyone. I was much less troubled that way. But now that I’ve seen the light beyond the cave, I don’t know if I can go back. 

Sorry, this got pretty heavy again. I’ll try to find a lighter post for the next one, though, post ideas come at random. We’ll see I guess.

tl;dr - expect nothing except for something