Judith Bellmunt on why we should live life with other people rather than just catch up after it’s all done.
Everyone that knows me knows how obsessed I’ve become with Friends over the last year, and how annoying I’ve become about it too. It’s a TV show that found me at the right time — when I’ve been living away from home for college and been lucky enough to have found my chosen family. Growing up, my school was 30 minutes away, so I never had friends that lived in my town. Going to college where all my friends have become my neighbours, and I can drop by their houses when I want, has been life changing. It has made friendships take a much deeper significance and place in my life.
I’ve learnt that the best friendships are those platonic ones, full of banter and teasing, where you feel like you’re siblings. Where you tell each other off for making irresponsible life decisions such as getting high before having to get a flight at 3:00 am, falling asleep during a lecture, or not going out on a Friday night. Where you do life together, whether it is doing laundry with each other to make it less tedious, or tagging along when they hand out CVs because their current job is terrible.
My best memories in college are certainly living with friends and student halls, where you can just knock on your housemates door when bored and go hang out in their room. Where 3am conversation in the kitchen, movie nights with wine, and having your roommate dye your hair spontaneously on a random Tuesday are regular occurrences. And so are taking midnight walks in pyjamas to talk about life, or gossip about your current landlord, who you all suspect is sleeping with one of the older women. Where conversations in the hallways when you bump into each other can end up in hour long philosophical conversations about life or politics, or the differences between your two countries.
“My best memories in college are certainly living with friends and student halls, where you can just knock on your housemates door when bored and go hang out in their room. Where 3am conversation in the kitchen, movie nights with wine, and having your roommate dye your hair spontaneously on a random Tuesday are regular occurrences.”
Where nobody is asleep at 12:00 or 1:00 am; the gamer bro in the room is shouting at the controllers, the student next door is talking on the phone in a language you’ll be trying to guess all year long, a group of friends are laughing in the room above you, and somehow some people are just now going down to make dinner. And strangely, or not, you feel so at home.
With an epidemic of loneliness gripping our societies, in this era of individualism, I say we should all have more traditions with friends, and live out life more with them. You don’t have to live in dorms or even share a house with your friends to do that. You can have drinks on Thursday after classes, movie nights on Sundays with take-out, or a dance class between lectures that day you have a long break.
One of the coolest things you can do is bi-weeekly dinners at your places. Although trying new restaurants is the best, nothing beats cooking together. Especially if you are all from different countries and can introduce each other to new food. Before you know it, you are asking around who wants coffee after lunch, taking out some chocolates for dessert, and you realize you seem like your parents when they’re hosting family parties. I once saw a Tiktok that said that there is a sort of intimacy in knowing where the cutlery in someone else's house is, and I think I have not seen anything truer on that app.
It’s these sort of regular meet-ups that we should have more of. We should also set out to discover more third spaces in town, places like Central Perk, because those secret hidden gems really do exist, you just won’t find them on TikTok or Instagram. Make it into a group hang, seek them out and become regulars with your friends. You know you’re winning in life when the owners know you and your order. Plus, there is something about going to the city center at dawn with all the lights. Those of us that live outside the city center should really go more often.
Again, it is not dramatic but a reality to say our societies are losing human connection. Our culture has become one of “catching up” rather than doing life together. We have become obsessed with “the hustle” and productivity. We don’t live in extended families anymore, or form communities with our neighbours, or bump into each other at the butcher, or the local fruit and vegetable store, because nobody goes to those anymore, or can afford to in this economy. With secularisation we have also lost those communities formed by religion, which have been swapped by what? Humans are meant to live in communities. I would even go as far as to say that the lack thereof is one of the reasons there’s such a big mental health crisis with young people.
Humans are meant to live in communities. I would even go as far as to say that the lack thereof is one of the reasons there’s such a big mental health crisis with young people.
College should be a time where you say yes to everything, where you join ten thousand societies, and where you chase all opportunities, to figure out who you are and what you want to do in the future. Once you get involved you begin to know everyone, which creates an unparalleled feeling of belonging and campus community. University should not be about going to class and going home.
If you live like that, any day going to college can feel like being in a sitcom and your days will start ending in ways you just wouldn’t have imagined when you woke up. Living life like a sitcom has no age. All the fun doesn’t have to stop when you end college, not if you carry that same energy with you through your adult lives. We shouldn’t forget the characters in Friends were 30 when the series started.