In my forties, I moved and began to learn to face new problems, one of which was: how to "make friends". My mother definitely didn't expect that she had nagged so much about life experience, but she didn't expect that a person would live to be forty years old and still worry about "making friends". Old friends can't be seen, new friends can't be made, this double-edged sword of reality can poke a person to death. When I was young, I was arrogant, thinking that the ends of the earth were full of friends, and I quarreled with this today, and I will find another one tomorrow, so I received ** New Year's greeting news during the Spring Festival, and I can't read it back. When I got to middle age, I was so miserable, I didn't even have **, as soon as I turned on my mobile phone, only the bank mobile Tmall*** sent a message of condolences. I've moved back a few times, and every time I moved, I lost a friend or two; Every time you get older, you will find that some people have not been in touch for years. used to shout on the mobile phone "Eat barbecue at night, don't come", and someone responded quickly; Later, everyone had all kinds of reasons for refusing, children's affairs, elderly affairs, overtime, and loss of some friends on days when they didn't see each other. 
Stills from "The First Half of My Life".In a middle-aged man who has to surrender to reality, friendship somehow falls to the bottom of the social chain. If you have to give up something precious, the first thing to be pushed out may be it. At this time, however, I began to need "friendship". Although I continue to keep in touch with friends from afar on my mobile phone, these are not enough, and friends should meet each other. I want to be face-to-face, and I want to be able to have tea and snacks with someone on weekend afternoons. I have come to realize that "enjoying solitude" and "being with friends" are two lifestyles that can coexist at the same time, and they are not contradictory. Living in a strange city, some people I know around me have long been accustomed to treating their husbands as "only friends", going to restaurants together, watching movies together, and being inseparable no matter where they go. Of course, this can get some convenience, but ah, single-line development, will lose a lot of fun and freedom, one of which is the fun of "complaining about the husband behind your back". I don't want to give up on this. 
The stills of "The Golden Years" found a group on Douban, and the name of the group is a little sad name: I can row the boat of friendship alone. There were many similar people there, pouring out their troubles about friendship. Imagine that picture, a stubborn, lonely helmsman, tragically moving forward on the endless sea. That man was by no means the old fisherman Santiago. Talk to your daughter before going to bed. She changed to a new school, facing unfamiliar faces and speaking unfamiliar languages every day. In the evening, she made up a few stories and imagined that her old best friend had also come here and continued to play with her. Just thinking about it makes me happy. As she spoke, tears streaming down her face. I said some words of comfort to her in vain, friends are not so easy to make, sometimes it depends on luck, even if you are good friends now, you may not talk again in the future. Forget it, it's better not to let her know about this too soon. In order to set a (superficial) role model for my children, I decided to work hard and make friends seriously. 
Stills from "The Reason Why I Can't Be in Love".How do people in their forties make friends? The basic guidelines for the universe are: regardless of nationality, regardless of gender, regardless of age (and even regardless of species), cast a wide net, and how many can be fished. I went to the school sports day, I met a new mother, our relationship is mainly in cooking, you put in a peach, I repay it. I made a bad edamame for her, and she was embarrassed and returned a cold chicken claw; I spread out a few more tortillas, and she hurriedly sent the child to bring a drawer of xiaolongbao; In October, I dug up a few pickled sour scallion heads, and in November, she brought a bag of small Hangzhou peppers... When my donkey skills were exhausted, she released the ultimate trick - the sausage she stuffed, which pushed this cooking competition to a new peak. Husband and daughter had a great time eating and asked what we planned to do next time. When I took the elevator home in the evening, I often met a little Indian girl who came back from the supermarket, she looked at me a few times, and I smiled at her a few times, I thought, wait for the next time we meet, maybe we will be friends. I also asked my daughter's classmate's Japanese mother out for lunch. Although the chickens and ducks talked to each other, it did not prevent us from making appointments again and again - we talked with paper and pen. 
At the same time, my daughter began to make friends in the community and made an appointment to play with her after school. The way the kids make friends makes me jealous, playing games so that they can become friends. But when it came to me, making friends was still so difficult, and every small step was like Armstrong's step to the moon. I have to admit that as an I-person, it is too difficult to take the initiative to make friends, and a middle-aged I-person is even more difficult. There is an Indian mother in my daughter's interest class, and we always meet. Countless times I have plucked up the courage to say hello, but the hardest part is how to say the first word. If there is surveillance, it will surely record a scene of a socially phobic person pushing his limits in the public eye. She stood up, sat down, paced, bent over, stretched her whole body, took out her phone and looked at it, pretended to drop things carelessly, and desperately took deep breaths, all stiff movements just to get up and say "hi". I don't remember how we ended up talking, because her Indian English gave me a second trauma, but the two of us finally started talking, she introduced the good restaurants in the neighborhood, and taught me how to make authentic lassi. I nodded stupidly and waved at each other as we parted, "See you next time." ”
82-year-old Kim Ji-young" stillsFor friends, I am no longer so picky, and I no longer ask for a friend who can be both this and that, and is not a household appliance and does not need to be multifunctional. Different personalities open up different modes of getting along. Some people can talk about their hearts, some people can make an appointment to go grocery shopping together, some people are suitable for dinner, and some people can only chat, and the topic is limited to a certain aspect. My new friend and I agreed to be ourselves, squatting in our respective territories, and not stepping into each other's "minefields" at will. I also made a new discovery, the "general friends" in the past, after some coincidences, have now been upgraded to "closer friends". I stumbled upon an old classmate who liked the same band, and when we met, I gave her a cherished autograph mug and replied shyly: Will you take off your fan? Never. She replied. Friendship is a lifelong thing, far longer than love, so long that it seems that it will take many years before I can gain a little experience from this matter: if you don't take the initiative to contact, you will never contact me, is such a person a friend? Do friends need to be in constant contact? Is it still a friend if you don't contact or communicate? Some people, once so important, can now be relegated to "ordinary friends"? 
Stills from Tokyo Women's ClubI told myself to lower my expectations, don't always blame myself, love can break up, friendship can say goodbye, and any uncomfortable relationship can end. People who think they are friends are actually just acquaintances who have known each other for more than ten years. When I realized this, I felt relieved. "I need friends. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about when you say what you think. In Beijing, I have two good friends, one is A and the other is B. They complained that they couldn't find someone to hang out in a café on the weekend. What's so difficult about this, I am like a middle-aged woman helping a cadre, bringing two lonely people together. They sent me the ** to eat hot pot together, and I was envious and happy. Let my friends and my friends be friends too, I can't think of a better ending than this.