This year at Bryan has started well. Classes are going well, extracurricular things are going well, I’m joyful during the day, and I have been given many opportunities to interact and serve others. But I want to tell you a little bit about what lies beneath the surface, and I won’t spend as much time on this topic because it’s not very complicated, and deserves no undue attention.
I’m well-known and generally well-liked among the community at Bryan.
There are hardly any people with whom I could not interact well, and with whom I would not be well enough accepted as a part of the group for the time. I think that people perceive this about me, and I know they make the assumption that I have a lot of friends, or that I’m friends with almost everyone on campus.
During the day, whether in class, or in one of the common areas, I have no trouble interacting with students and staff of all ages, majors, and athletic interests, even when I don’t know them. It is very common for me to interact with someone new whom I haven’t met, whether due to something we are working on, or simply because we are in the same place at the same time.
When someone needs help or an answer, many people will see me as a short route to the solution, because I know people and answers. I can get things done effectively, and I know what questions to ask of what people.
So people think that I have no shortage of people to be friends with.
But that’s not how this works.
Because at night, everyone who is busy in class and work during the day recedes into the various niches of their true selves. They return to the people and activities that truly engage them, and can usually be found in the same places at the same times with the same people on a very predictable basis.
It will surprise many people to learn that I don’t have one of those groups.
That one group of friends you have that always studies together, always signs up for classes and chapel seats together, always texts everyone else in the group if one of them gets the slightest inclination to do anything, and is always associated each with the others when any of them are mentioned in conversations, is a group I don’t have.
For those of you who have read my prior writings and remember what I’ve written, you know that when I started developing friendships at Bryan, I avoided falling into association with a “Friend Group”. I knew that friend groups create an illusion of popular acceptance which can be very easily shattered when the group dissolves.
However, I have noticed a sharp contrast between the end of last semester and the beginning of this one, and I have learned something about friend groups and their nature.
A friend group is a web of friends of each other. This means that all of them have a general set of things in common that make them good friends with someone in the group, and therefore friends in general with the others. I was in a couple of friend groups last semester because I had good friends in them, and while I did not notice it, I became decently good friends with others in those groups as well.
One of my best friends became a commuter this semester and was therefore not on campus as much, and the other graduated this past spring. And while I still see the first one quite a lot and talk to the second one several times every week, I still find myself in the same place elsewhere.
As night falls on campus, the people who eagerly accompanied me throughout the day all but vanish completely.
I usually drift quite a bit at this time, encountering groups of people randomly and sometimes joining them for a short period, but usually not for long. They’ll soon end up splitting up and going somewhere else, at which point I continue drifting.
One might think that this would be the most productive time of day for me, having ample opportunity to work on homework and projects. But as I may have mentioned, I find it exceptionally difficult to focus on anything if I’m sitting in the dorm by myself. I often end up with no choice, and one assignment that I do ahead of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which takes me generally no longer than thirty minutes, takes up an hour and a half of my night because I cannot train my mind to maintain its productivity when I am by myself.
I say all this for no other reason than to continue putting it out there, for whomever is interested to know this much about me. I am starting to become used to this way of living and to trust that God may be using it to mold me. But I won’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt. Because it does. I genuinely want someone to want me around for who I am when the lights are out, rather than to want to follow the inevitable spotlight that my lifestyle and ambitious productivity attract.
If I could disappear from every place of fame and renown on campus and just be in a group of friends, I would.
But God is calling me to keep serving those areas for His glory.
And so I must trust that, for His glory, He will also use The Isolation.