Quality over QUANTITY; North Carolina boudoir . - featured writer Meredith baker
Why Quality Over Quantity Is Important When It Comes to Friends and More
As I've gotten older, it has become more apparent that your friends tend to dwindle and you have fewer acquaintances, fewer Facebook friends, fewer contacts in your address book.
This isn't a bad thing. Having busy adult lives means you only really have time for the things that matter most and the people that care to listen and be a part of your crazy world.
It's comforting knowing we have those people who will just check in with us to see how we're doing or will vent with us about how hard being an adult is.
I don't have a slew of friends, but the ones I have mean so much to me. I have a friend I can be a homebody with, a friend I can reminisce with about elementary school days, a friend that will help me plan a spontaneous trip, a friend I can go to an art show with, a friend I can always rely on for game nights or a backyard cookout, and a friend who loves to get their freak on at a dance party.
Our values change as we get older and we come to see the world in a new light. We crave those deeper connections where we can be real with one another, where we don't just tell someone we're doing fine as a polite greeting in passing.
We'd like to think we understand the importance of living for ourselves and not to please others; we're no longer trying to squeeze ourselves into a tiny, suffocating box. We learn to appreciate the small stuff that can light up our day or the friend that makes us laugh so hard we cry and reminds us of the joys of this life.
We live in constant hustle and bustle, and it's easy to get distracted with surface level material. Social media can be one of those, but it has its benefits when not used in a toxic, misinformed way. It can be comforting to feel connected with one another via social media, but only to a point. It doesn't replace having a glass of wine with a friend or going for a walk in the park. It is the moments when we have that friend's undivided attention where they have set aside that hour or two to be with us, to really hear us that makes us feel connected.
The quality relationships are those where you can carry on deeper, stimulating conversation whether on the phone, virtually, or in person. Now as I find myself in a permanent work from home situation, I understand, more than ever, the value of just being with a person where you can be more vulnerable and read their face and really SEE them — see what they are feeling when they can't hide behind their profile pictures and computer screens. It feels REAL, and it makes you feel most alive. Something as simple as holding a friend's hand or embracing them can go a long way.
Quality over quantity in the tangible sense can also greatly impact our lives. We live in a fast-paced world of consumerism where we're being constantly convinced through all manner of advertising that the thing we bought last Christmas is out of date or out of style.
At a certain point, though, we have to realize that those things don't buy happiness. We think that if we just get one more item on Amazon, we'll be satisfied. It just doesn't work that way. We can find ourselves drowning in all the stuff, and we wonder why we felt we needed it to begin with. Maybe we've never even used it before and it's collecting dust in a closet. There's no end game.
We have to make the decision to say we're ok with the things that matter most, and the rest can wait. We don't have to have the latest and greatest.
It is freeing to allow yourself to say no.
In a world where we are pulled in so many directions to achieve quantity over quality, I've been learning to slow down, take a deep breath, and take in the world around me. Simply put, "less is more".
