Being A Better Friend

I listened to this podcast the other day, which, truthfully, I probably wouldn’t advise unless you have time to kill while you perform one of your least favorite chores. I was unpacking from a big trip away which certainly must classify as one of my least favourite chores. Why and how does the gear one takes on a trip suddenly expand upon arriving home to cover over 700 square metres and all it require washing, drying and mending when, prior to departure all the gear was in good nick and fit into the back of an average vehicle?

Normal explosion of gear when kayakers reach camp.
PC: DB

As we both ruminate on the expansion and deterioration of gear in the “post trip phase” I will give you my thoughts on the podcast. First, the guest speaker comes dangerously close to saying “you are just not a good enough person to be friends with me.” There’s an audacity and hubris about this that is somehow a bit chilling, like the concept of the Aryan nation being the purest expression of our species.

Sunrise and the start of a 50 km day on the 

south coast of Tasmania,

PC: DB

I’m all for personal development and life-long learning but simply reading self-help books and following “inspiring” Instagram accounts achieves neither of those things and we are fooling ourselves if we think it does. My own personal life observations support my personal hypothesis (and you may have a different one) that the more reading, listening, viewing one does of self-help and personal development books, podcasts, stories, etc. the less personal growth one actually achieves. It’s a bit like that study done way back when and since forgotten because the ramifications were unpalatable which found that people who visualised having done the thing (whatever the thing was) were actually less likely to achieve the thing. The one facility that all of us excel at without realisation about just how exceptional we are is how good we are at fooling ourselves.

I could be judgey and say that making toasties with chocolate bars

 is not a healthy choice but if you've just paddled 

the west coast of Tasmania, you get to do what you want.  PC: DB

We never know another persons struggles or difficulties or walk along the exact same path as them so it really is best, as much as is possible, to avoid assumptions and judgements and instead focus on being a better friend rather than demanding other people in our life be better friends to us.