Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
P.why is it so difficult to make new friends after a certain age? The simplest answer is the right one: when the -anta is exceeded, everyone has already chosen their group of friends based on their lifestyle habits.
Moms will prefer others to create a support circle; singles will seek each other to share loneliness. The two groups can intersect but with great difficulty.
I have long argued that friendships that don’t work must be abandoned or taken for what they are. Otherwise they will occupy the space in our mental box that fresh friendships could take.
Already, but where are these new friendships made? I have always believed that these arise from common interests, so participating in social activities with people who have the same passions can be fruitful.
I had never considered the hypothesis that friendships could be “combined”, as happens with weddings. I never thought that because arranged marriages are not part of my culture, let alone friendships.
But then I read the story of the Iranian writer Ari Honarvar (49), whose experience in successful arranged marriages gave her the idea. Which she quickly put into practice when she discovered that even an open city like San Diego was not fertile for new acquaintances.
Ari has selected a number of potential friends in the casual encounters he was able to have, and at all he sent an invitation to come to his home to try this social experiment.
Eight of them accepted. They found themselves in Ari’s garden and there, in a solemn form, they looked into each other’s eyes, exchanging an oath of eternal friendship. Not before having shared with each other the hot impressions that their human contact aroused.
Incredibly, says the writer, the experiment has been going on for four years now. Among the friends, only one left, replaced by two others. As in arranged marriage, Ari says, the friendship born in this way makes clear the existence of a bond that we must strive to keep alive, looking for new reasons over time. Could this be the magic formula?
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