> Making friends takes work, and success is not guaranteed; That's the gist of it. In our society, people think human relationships are obvious, should be nat

> Making friends takes work, and success is not guaranteed; That's the gist of it. In our society, people think human relationships are obvious, should be natural and self evident. It's a concept that is reinforced by the medias, but also by the childhood memories where it kinda was. But in the adult world, there are many social contracts and artificial boundaries you have to overcome, and connecting with people IS work. What's more, it's work a lot of people are not trained to do anymore. And it's work with important consequences, good and bad. I lived in Africa for a while, and there, you HAVE to connect to people to live. In some countries, basic informations and services can only be obtains by direct contact with another human. So the locals have no problem with loneliness, they make and break relations with ease. Our modern society are making us kinda handicaped in that mesure, providing so many ways to avoid human contacts: delivery services, text informations everywhere, listings of things, etc. You don't have to ask where to find a product, what it contains, the price, then negociate it. You go to the shop, read, then pay, sometime even to a machine, or order it online. It clicked, going back. I realized how easier my life was, and what a "cheat code" it is to just be able to talk to a random girl or joke with the guy next to me in the waiting room. I don't miss my times of being an introvert. It had zero benefits for myself. We may mock Japan, but we are not making progress ourself.