Sean Johnson - Intentionally - The Education of Sean Johnson

This probably doesn’t make any sense.

In the past few years, I’ve found it difficult to relate with the lives of my friends. We’ve aged, have pursued wildly different paths, have gotten married, have made or are in the process of making babies. These are the years where we chart out the courses of our respective lives. We’ve heated up the glass and are blowing it into the shape it will likely become. Granted, some of us will smash it and start over again at various points in our lives, but for many of us our lives are being set up right now.

I’ve never thought much about it before this morning, but it’s like the years of schooling, of learning how to date and how to hold a fork and how to balance a checkbook and how to shake someone’s hand are all preface. It’s the period that follows - that critical period of maybe ten years after one graduates that determines most of who we will become. We decide on a vocation - unlike college where changing one’s mind is customary, people are encouraged to choose one ladder or another and hang on. We find a mate and enter into a union with them - assimilating much of their character and life experience into ourselves in the process.

They say that high school or college are the periods of greatest change for people, but I’m not sure if I agree with that. Ideas were being formed and challenged during those times, but thanks to the crazy world we now live in I think our ideas are perpetually being shaped, stretched, ripped apart and rebuilt again.

I feel like things are different during this period of life because we’re much more focused on the business of creating our lives. We’re no longer theorizing about what we’ll do or be when we grow up - we’re actively working on being grown up. We’re intensely focused on making our jobs or businesses or new families into what we want. And as a result we start fitting ourselves into a mold of what we want our lives to truly become. We’re less permeable because we have to be.

Which is why it’s sometimes hard for me and my old friends to relate. We’re on such different paths now, it’s hard to find mutual interests. It’s difficult for me to share my enthusiasm for my work - most of my friends don’t really get why I live and breathe this stuff. Likewise, I have a hard time relating to the business of building families, dealing with mortgages and the like. These are some of the biggest moments in the lives of my friends, but my brain’s laser focus on work and my wife leaves far too little emotional energy to devote to sharing in their excitement.
The glass is being set, and while most of that is necessary and important, I still feel bad about it. For my part, I want to try to shape myself in such a way that I don’t totally put the blinders on. I want to open myself up to sharing the experiences and happiness of those around me, even if their experiences are completely foreign to my own.