In recent years, I send and receive nearly no birthday, Christmas or new year wishes. This is a sharp contrast to ten years ago whereby my phone will be inundated with text greetings during these festive periods.

I am not being unsociable, I have not gotten dark, neither am I complaining.

There is a kind of unspoken peace that comes with a quiet morning following a public holiday. Besides, most of these text messages are usually transactional agendas hiding behind a "how-are-you-doing-in-life" coffee chat.

Perhaps the truth is, social gatherings bore me these days.

According to Mel Robbins,

"When people come and go in your life, 99% of the time it’s not personal."

Most of the time, this is attributed to proximity, timing and energy, which are pillars to social interaction.

When you were little, you spent most of your time in the same neighborhood with friends who went to the same school, and did the same things. It is therefore not surprising that many of our fondest and purest memories are during our school-going days.

When you hit the twenties and beyond, everybody starts to embark on different timelines. Some are pursuing jobs, going to graduate school, or getting married. Others are moving out of the city or moving into the city. Everybody's proximity and timing are now different.

Likewise, you can have camaraderie with somebody, and then lose contact when the energy is off.

If you decide you are not drinking anymore, the energy's off. If you decide to get focused on fitness, the energy's off. If your political beliefs diverge, the energy's off. 

It is not personal, the energy is just off.

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For many years now, I had renounced posting on social media, keeping only my LinkedIn profile intact to upkeep a digital identity and writing content here. Some folks think I have gotten dark. For me, it is just a progressive realization.

Everyone has moved on and are located in different cities, or in various stages of their lives in which priorities are different. After two decades, the playbook has changed for everyone.

As I get older, I am also increasingly less empathetic to people who add unnecessary drama to their lives. I have less patience to those who are consistently comparing their net worth to others, name-dropping in social circles, or make their circumstances and situation your responsibility to solve.

Whenever someone asks for an opinion, I find myself almost always agreeing with them. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy a healthy debate occasionally but in my experience, nine out of ten times the person on the opposite end of the table isn't really looking for a genuine opinion. They are either trying to sell you something, get assurance on a certain point of view, or just to show off. I try to avoid settings like these.

No amount of explaining or words will change a conclusion that someone has committed to keeping. I am not trying to be unfriendly, I am more selective about where I focus my energy on. These realizations are also not epiphanies distilled from working in a rat race over the years, they are simply moments of clarity.

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