How to Loose Friends and Disregard People
How to Lose Friends and Disregard People is an obvious take off
from the famous book by one of the most read authors in the World who opined
about how to make friends and influence people. Yesterday, walking down Park Street, I saw
the book still being sold among the wares of the iconic street bookshops, and I
started to wonder if there was a need to, nowadays, write something about how
to ensure that people can be disregarded and got rid of. There was much demand
for Dale’s book because making friends requires work and dedication while
influencing people is much more than what sensation-creating
"influencers" do on various digital platforms. Dale Carnegie was
motivated to author the book because he saw the hunger and the need in people
to find empathy and curiosity to learn about others. That was then, but now, I
see the carcasses of slaughtered friendships and people yearning to get “out”
because friendships are merely opportunities, and when a new person offers the
opportunity there is an urgent need to get rid of the person who had earlier
offered the similar opportunities. In his
time, Dale wrote about the process of making friends and holding on to them; as
well as having a genuine influence on other human beings which requires a basic
honest commitment that is beyond the transactional and opportunistic need to
quickly find and exploit the value of a person. The process Dale elaborated demanded
thoughtful introspection as Dale reminded with care and eloquence. On the other
hand the topic of this blog does not require the 288 pages (the Simon and
Schuster version of Dale Carnegie's book) but less than a five-minute read because
disregarding people and getting rid of friends is, after all, a less than a
five minute process. One can successfully end a friendship by a simple
conversation over a cup of coffee, or even simply by disregarding the person.
The process is quite straightforward. By starting to ignore a person, sort of
the reverse of "acknowledging" the person as my friend Professor Hyde
would remind us, it is possible to quickly get rid of a person who once was
needed and went under the label of a "friend," albeit provisionally. Earlier,
the process was a little more subtle without access to some of the technologies
that are available to disregarded people. Now the phone is a good tool to lose
friends, ironically by its non-use than by its use - by simply stopping the
phone calls it is possible to send the signal that one is disregarding someone
else. Add to that the other available tools, and some have actually invented a
new word - ghosting - to describe a way to pointedly disregard and thus reach
the goal of getting rid of a person who was once a friend. Just as making a
friend, with dedication and effort, and nurturing a friendship with commitments
of time and emotions, offered a certain reward to all parties, the process of
disregarding and the consequent loss of a friend comes with certain emotional
premiums and losses. Because there is an emotional journey related to building
and maintaining a friendship that is much more strenuous than the simple off
ramp needed to lose a friend and disregard a person. What the original book
emphasized is that there is a non-conditional aspect to friendship, and the
journey requires commitment of action - things that demonstrate a friendship
from phone calls to time spent together. Getting off that journey simply
requires the absence of those actions, and the job is completed. Most
importantly, an extremely limited resource – time – had to be thoughtfully used
to make and maintain friendships remembering that making friends requires a commitment
of time. Unfortunately, that resource is increasingly strained and must be prioritized.
Old friends need to be jettisoned when new ones come along, especially when the
new ones seem more exciting and beneficial. Thus, for this short handbook the
key takeaway is: To lose friends and disregard people it is simply enough to
deny them the time that was offered to them before. Nothing sends a stronger message,
and the task is complete, and new people can then be offered the time that was
being wasted earlier on the friend that has been successfully abandoned. This is why
it takes just a few words to write the inverse of the original book because it
is much easier to restrict time to a person than to prioritize time for a
person. Interestingly, in these situations the one who has been
"unfriended" - to use a fashionable technological word - is in the
situation that The Boss has stated in his song: "You can blame it all on
me, Terry, it don't matter to me now."
Comments
Much has been written about the loneliness, epidemic, and the sense that many have that they are alone, yet surrounded by people. I’ve watched changes in my neighborhood that I have lived in for over 20 years. When I first moved in most of the people I was surrounded by were homeowners and it took a while, but once I adopted a puppy, I quickly was introduced to and met most of my neighbors in the immediate area. Over the years a lot of changes have happened in my neighborhood and many of the homes are now rental units. The psychology of those who live in my neighborhood has drastically changed. All due respect to renters, but their psychology tends to differ from owners. At the same time, the changes in the residential real estate market where I live have allowed owners to offload properties, almost without even listing them publicly, and at sales prices which allow them to make a handsome profit very rapidly. The motivation to stay and build/maintain community has been over ridden in many cases by the desire to make money and get a quick sale. That’s not even to touch on the impact of short term rentals in the area where I live, and how being embedded in numerous forms in what are neighborhoods provides a built-in disconnect between those that are living in the area long-term and being able to build community and neighborhood relationships. Today in my neighborhood, I have to make a direct and concerted effort to meet anyone who moves in. They will go to work. They will come home. They will shut their doors and lock their doors. It’s almost like they are anxious and don’t know how to socially interact something that should come easy by the time one is an adult. Maybe they have forgotten; maybe they never learned.
I see similar things happen in grocery stores and other public locations where friendly banter or helping someone if you see them struggling to get something off a shelf is fairly uncommon today. I have found that if I hold a door for somebody some don’t quite know what to do with the act of simple kindness and shared connection. As our mutual friend, Dr. Hyde shares, when someone is crying out into the darkness “here I am!,” all they really want is for someone to call back and say I see you. It’s that crux of acknowledgment that Dr. Hyde speaks of which really still cuts to the bone of what is going on right now and the irony that many will say they want better and stronger relationships, yet the very acts that allow them to have those relationships are something they shun or avoid.
Very thought-provoking blog. Thank you so much.