One of the recurring themes of my posts here (the most recent is Someone Is Pulling The Strings Again) is my thoughts on the applicability of the “Red Thread of Fate” – East Asian folklore that is specifically about the way in which we are “bound” to our soulmate, but which I see as a useful metaphor for the way in which we are “connected” to each other in a multitude of ways (perhaps there out to be more colours to denote the ‘nature’ of the connection! We could then have a rainbow world – in whatever dimension that thread resides!!!)
The trigger for this particular musing is the fact that my daughter is commencing her university studies today. There are a huge number of people that she will become “connected” to within the next few days. I don’t know how many folks are on the course that she has chosen, but all her fellow students plus a department full of staff have suddenly become tied together by the red thread. (or whatever colour that denotes a ‘professional’ connection!)
There is a sense in that all of these people have chosen each other – as they all clearly have some common interest in studying (or teaching) the subject. Equally there has been a certain amount of selection – by both staff and students – regarding the admission process to the University. However, that aspect of “tieing the string” is not what has caused this particular post – rather it is the more ‘random’ new connections that are interesting.
There are many times through our lives when we meet other people – or read a particular book – or listen to a piece of music – as a result of some sort of accident. It is reasonably common that a third party gets to “tie the string” – by inviting previously “unconnected” people to a party, for instance. It is – I think – less common for strings to be tied in a deliberate – but essentially random – way.
The Halls of Residence consist of a number of flats – in my daughter’s case there are four other people sharing her flat. They are sharing – not out of choice – but as a result of some sort of allocation method used by the management of the Halls. They don’t have any say in who they end up sharing with – although, of course, I suspect there are ways of changing if you just simply don’t get on.
So – four “instant” friends – or, at least, four new people to know.
I guess the folklore would say that the five of them were already tied together – and that the admissions process simply arranged for the strings to be pulled a little tighter. That is, of course, consistent with some of what I have written previously whereby I sort of think that we are connected to EVERYONE else and it is simply a matter of how the strings are pulled that causes the ‘interesting’ bits.
Even if you do subscribe to that view, it merely moves the question from “who TIED the string” to “who TIGHTENED the string” – which is pretty much just as puzzling.
In terms of personal choice there was an element of “self-pull” on the strings – all five of them chose the same University – all five of them chose the particular halls of residence – but that still only narrowed the field down to a couple of thousand people – each of whom had a (roughly) equal chance of ending up as flatmates.
Its too early to say whether the mix is a good one – only time will tell. They also have no idea whether the friendships formed will last for just this year or whether it will develop into a lifelong friendship.
From that I guess I am better examining my own “history” – looking back at times when I had equally ‘random’ connections. I didn’t ever stay in a Hall of Residence, so I cannot have a direct comparison – indeed looking back there have been very few occasions in my life where I have ended up mixing with a group of randomly collected individuals.
There have been many times I have found myself in a group of “new” acquaintances – but as far as I can remember most (all?) of them have resulted because we had some sort of common interest and therefore some pre-known connection with each other. Perhaps it might be interesting to see whether there are any of my circles of friends that contain people that I have met entirely randomly in the same way as my daughter has her flatmates.
Certainly all the people that I would number among my closest friends are people that I ‘chose’ in one way or another to get to know. There are quite a few instances of people that I have met because we shared a common interest – but I think in all cases the common interest ’caused’ us to meet rather than us meeting first and discovering a common interest.
The nearest experience I have to that of my daughter’s current situation was when I worked in Wien for a number of months. There are a lots of differences between the situations – but one big common factor – we were a group of people who were brought together in an unfamiliar environment. Sure there was an element of choice – I applied for that particular job – but I was choosing the job, not the work colleagues. The fact that we were a group from one country living and working in another country inevitably increased the cohesion in the group.
The experience taught me a lot of lessons about accepting other people’s differences. It was a group of people from diverse backgrounds – albeit coming together to work – so there was some shared characteristics as well. The important thing (in the context of this blog entry) is that we had been “thrown together” and had to work out our own social interactions. That is in comparison with most situations where we are actually with people that we have “grown” to know over a period of time – family, friend or whatever.
You know how your family and friends will react – your know their likes and dislikes. In contrast in that situation we were all “feeling our way” and developing a camaraderie borne out of the situation. As it is for my daughter and her flatmates there were a set of ‘rules’ that governed how we interacted at a “meta”-level – but virtually nothing about how we could relate to each other on a personal level. It was all new.
I, perhaps, experienced slightly more of this than the others as they all had a bit of a head start on me in “bonding” – I joined the team a few months after everyone else.
Now – I look back on that experience with fondness. It taught me so much – and as I already hinted at – it probably made me more tolerant of others. Certainly it made me realise that just about anyone can become a friend if the circumstances are right. The context is so important – perhaps the “atmosphere” is responsible for tightening that red thread sometimes. In other situations at least some of the folks that I shared my time in Wien with would not have been my ‘choice’ of companion.
That is not in any way a criticism of them – merely that their interests and lifestyle was very different from my own – which, of course, also explains why even within that small(-ish) group there were still some people with whom the ‘bond’ was stronger than it was with some others.
So – there are clearly a lot of different ways in which the tension in the red thread is changed. I am sure that this topic will re-appear in future posts.