Our world's technology is rather amazing. If I really wanted to, I could never leave my house or see another human being ever again. I could even get a jump start on the ever-enviable Old Cat Lady syndrome. I could finish my degree online, get groceries and take-out delivered to my house, buy all my clothes from internet distributors, save money from not "going out", and talk on the phone with all my friends and family. No more sitting next to classmates who haven't showered since the beginning of the quarter. No more Bangladeshi cashiers who have such heavy accents you don't know what your total is. And no more spending the money on a dinner that didn't taste that great when all you really wanted to do was talk. This kind of lifestyle would be efficient and far more painless without such people hassles...
But strangely...no it wouldn't.
Relationships are utterly inconvenient and inefficient. You spend money eating meals with people, money on gifts for their birthday, hours and hours of time with the only rewards being strangely un-quantifiable. And if you live with them, you have to deal with their bad habits and bad moods: a sink with their dirty dishes, a stove top burner left on, and then they snap at you for no reason after they have a bad day. Yet some of the people who have inconvenienced me most (or who I have inconvenienced most) are, strangely, closest to me.
One of my present closest friendships started out with infamous inconvenience - she puked on the stairs in my house in the first month that I knew her. As in, I had to get a bucket and a rag to clean up the vomit she deposited along the length of my stairs. Yet a year-and-a-half later she was second in line among my bridesmaids. My grandmother and I became closer because of the enormous inconvenience my wedding burdened us both with. And when I inconvenienced "my chinese family" to donate their evening to cutting vegetables for my reception's appetizer trays, we had the best time we've ever spent together.
Relationships exact a highly inconvenient cost: personal time. But they've yet to invent a convenient way around that.
Convenience is something that's a measurable cost cutter - saves time, saves money, saves hassle. And in America, convenience is king. From Wendy's to Netflix to Amazon, we expect expedited convenience. We've probably been stumped in a convenience-worshipping climate because relationships simply refuse to become convenient. Convenience is about quantity, but relationships are inescapably about quality. There's no fast-forward button for the slow process of trust building, and no substitute for the pure presence of a person. Ask any kid to compare how they felt when dad came to their game, and when their mom had to tape it for him. The score doesn't change, but for some reason it's not the same.
There's a cost for relationships, but immeasurable rewards after paying the small fees. And convenience, at the cost of avoiding those relational fees, comes with a greater price: loneliness.
Loneliness is a strange thing. It's not just about being in a room full of people - any one who has felt left out at a party can testify. It's not about living in the city, either - most people probably only know their neighbor's names because of the letters on their mailboxes. And it's not just about talking - we live in an age of unmatched global communications technology. We've streamlined meeting our practical needs that it has cost us the social structures of meeting our relational needs. And beating it is all about quality of friends and taking delight in the sheer inconvenience of them.
Essentially, I believe the crowning of convenience in our time has crippled our community. And, especially now that it's warm outside, I plan to start inconveniencing myself and my neighbors much more.
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