Making relationships
Today, we hosted our first house party in our hacker house. I realized I might not be good in many aspects, but I’m really really good at making friends.
I have lots of disagreements with my housemate when hosting this house party. They said hosting a party would be easy. I disagreed. I thought it was rewarding but tiring. They said half of the people are going to bail, let’s invite as many as we can, but I disagreed. I didn’t think that many people would bail, and I insisted on giving people enough space to comfortably talk rather than fitting as much as we could. They said we didn’t need to prepare much beforehand and we just let people chill. I disagreed. The host of house parties had a big responsibility to engineer environments in every corner for everyone to feel comfortable (I do have a handbook in my brain for it). I noticed we had a big difference in perception and expectation of house parties. In fact, three hours before the party, a flatmate asked me if we could cancel the party. I said it’s a firm no, we couldn’t be disrespectful to people’s time. And I realized that intentional care for people did matter a lot. It’s one of the biggest reason on why I am good at making friends.
To begin with, 90% of the attendee who showed up were all from my invitation. To be exact, only two people out of 10+ at the party weren’t from my invitation. I was very surprised that even those who I only met once briefly before came. One told me, “You gave me a nice vibe. I meant it seriously.” The other one said, “I do want to see you again.” This person shocked me even more because I knew she was a crazy workaholic who only slept and worked, and we only met once too. I didn’t expect that she would show up at all. Besides, another two friends even traveled more than an hour just to make it to this house party.
At the end of the party, I realized both of our predictions of bailing were correct. It’s just a difference in how we interacted with people and treated our relationships. This is already shown in how we plan and perceive a party. For instance, I know I’m really good at making friends but on top of that, I deeply cared about their experience no matter in a personal or a group setting. “Not preparing” means that guests will need to survive on their social skills on their own, but I want to engineer as much as I could to make sure they don’t need to do that. Even during the party, I will try very hard to engage people who are alone or find a way to connect them to others, rather than focusing on the people I’m interested in the most.
People always tell me I’m crazily good at making friends. Today, I see that being good at making friends doesn’t mean being good at carrying a conversation. Beyond personality, it’s about deeply caring about people’s experiences, and therefore willing to pay attention to all the nitty-gritty details. The attention and intention are my value, my standard, and my action. Coming to a party relies on people’s trust in me and their trust in the people I surrounded myself with. I feel very grateful that people trusted me so much even if it’s a brief encounter.
