I went out to lunch with a coworker today. She’s someone I have known for years, and have always thought she was just a wonderful person. As long as I’ve known her, she’s been bubbly and upbeat, cheering others on around her in their endeavors, and just an inspiration on how to be a decent person. But being a natural introvert, I’ve never been one to make the first move to get to know her better – or anyone at work, for that matter. I’ve always left it up to others to try and get to know me better because it’s just easier that way, you know? There’s less risk involved. Naturally that must mean I have tons of friends, right?
You’d think, huh.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t work that way. But regardless, this coworker and I connected recently and came to the mutual decision that we should really have lunch. We ended up having over an hour of fantastic conversation as we discussed everything from our kids to our faith, and everything in between. When we got back to our desks, she emailed me the kindest note. In it, she mentioned that while it might not seem like it, she’s actually a very shy person.
“I’m not one to socialize much,” she wrote, “but you make it very easy. Let’s do it again!”
When it’s hard to make friends, maybe we just need a reminder we’re not the only ones who are shy. Somewhere out there is another human being who is longing for a friend and not sure how to go about it. It’s not just us who are afraid to make the first move. Others are too. But if no one makes the first move, then no one will go forward.
This truth is currently being illustrated by my stepson, Frizz, as he agonizes how to ask out the girl he has liked for the better part of the school year. As a senior, he is closing in on the end of his high school years. He is also closing in on the last chance he has to even talk to the girl he likes – let alone ask her out on a date, and perhaps even ask her to be his girlfriend. But just making that first step is terrifying enough, let alone any of the steps that follow after that.
Not sure how to advise my stepson, I asked my daughter, DQ, how she has been asked out in the past. She shared her most recent experience with me. The boy got to know her by asking a lot of questions about her, keeping his attention focused on her. The attraction proved to be mutual, and both of them dropped hints about their interest in each other. And when this boy was able to see that DQ was into him, he asked her to be his girlfriend.
“I guess what Frizz should do is just really try to get to know this girl better, then get her number, and when the moment seems right, tell her how he feels and see if she feels the same way,” DQ advised. “If he does it right, he might even know that she likes him back when he gets to that point.”
Of course, she makes it sound so easy. And truthfully, if you put your nerves aside, it really is that easy. But for someone as shy as Frizz, as shy as my coworker, as shy as ME, taking that first step can feel like preparing to jump off a cliff.
But if no one makes the first move, then no one will go forward.
I guess this could be a lesson in anything. We never know what will happen unless we make that first move – whether it be making a new friend, expressing a feeling of adoration, publishing a book, taking a stand for yourself, risking it all…. If we live a life so full of caution that it keeps us from living life to the fullest, we can’t claim we know the bad that will happen. We also will never know the good that will happen.
Being social for an introvert might feel totally unnatural. But while painful at first, barreling through that shyness isn’t lethal. It might seem that way, but taking that first step won’t strike you down dead. The worst that can happen is that you might get turned down. Sucky, sure. But you’ll be able to move beyond it rather than getting stuck in the unknown. And the best that can happen? You’ll get exactly what you wanted in the first place. A new friend. That special someone who likes you just as much as you like her. Or a published book (only a few more weeks left until A Symphony of Cicadas is officially published).
We’ll never know until we’ve made the first move.
Life is full of seasons. In the spring of our lives, we are protected and cared for by our parents. We grow and learn, we change and mature. We are in love with our parents, we hate our parents. We make friends with our neighbors just because they live near us. Our whole world is in the very neighborhood we live in. Hours feel like days, days feel like years, and years feel like an eternity. We are young, we are carefree, we will live on forever. In our season of summer, we have realized that we have minds of our own. And with that knowledge, we are brilliant! We become experts on certain subjects, knowing more than anyone else could possibly know about it. We are the beautiful people, the ones who are on top and going to make this world so much better than our parents – their generation truly screwed things up for us. We go off to college with our heads held high, our futures on the tips of our tongues. We leave and start families, swearing that we will not make the same mistakes as our parents when it comes to raising our children. “God forbid I sound like my mother!” Autumn comes, and our children have grown older. We come to the realization that perhaps we didn’t know it all, that maybe our parents actually did know a thing or two. We chuckle at our own children saying the same things we used to tell our parents – back when we knew it all. But it’s ok. The burden of knowing it all has been lifted from our shoulders, and we are content to know more than we did in our youth…and still have so much more to learn. We are suddenly less self conscious – how many people are really watching our every move, waiting for us to fall? No one has that time. We can finally live freely, and amazingly we possess more freedom than we did in our youth. In this season, our children will grow to leave our home and create families of their own, possibly entering their own autumn before we have moved on to winter. And winter will come for us too. One day we will be watching the leaves fall to the ground as we hug the sweaters to our aging bodies, and the next, the snow will have fallen on a whole new season of our lives. I have not reached it yet, but with the way time is passing so fast I know it will be here before I know it.
When I was a kid, Valentine’s Day was a holiday to look forward to. It was a treat to wake up on Valentine’s Day to see what surprises were left for us at our place on the kitchen table. While most mornings were littered with pleas from us to wait “5 more minutes” before we got up, Valentine’s Day was treated much like Christmas – we were up before the sun. At the table there would be three places set with a little chocolate box, some candy hearts, a Valentine’s Day card, a Pez dispenser, and a new pair of Valentine’s Day socks. Sometimes there would be a little trinket, like a heart shaped glass bead on a chain or a little box with some gold coins on it. But always, there was the surprise of small treats that meant the world for us. After a breakfast of heart-shaped pancakes, we would grab our bag of homemade valentines for our classmates, excited for a day when we received at least 30 new valentines. At the end of the day our bellies would be full of candy and cookies, and our teeth coated with the sugar of little confectioner’s hearts that had messages of “Be mine” and “XOXO”. Then we would read through every single valentine to see if there was some hidden message between the lines of Garfield proclaiming his love for lasagna on a folded piece of pink paper that the cutest boy sent out to every girl in the class.
