Happy New Year. It’s now the end of January, when the academic world tucks into its work, settling in for the real business of doing research. The holidays are now a warm memory for us, like that first sip of coffee when we take a moment to breathe in the morning. I would like to relive some of those memories with you here. So snuggle in, cradle that coffee to keep you warm, and enjoy this piece of my life.

For those of you who have heard of my tribulations with ‘the system’ in the past, it should come as no surprise to you that things have not changed on that front. This time the adventures centred on renewing my UK student visa. My old one expired in October, which is when I submitted my application for renewal. One aspect of the application, though, is providing proof of funding, which is a bit difficult to prove since I still don’t have any, as there seemed to be a discrepancy between my loan agency and New College (nothing to do with me) that neither were willing to settle (this, mind you, was only the case for me. Over a half dozen other students at New have the same loan I was applying for, from the same agency, and encountered no problem…). Since the holidays were getting closer, and I had already bought my tickets in October for my holiday to America, I decided to pull my application from the Home Office and head home with no idea whether I would return. This, understandably, worried my supervisor a bit, but it was time for me to get back in touch with America, as I had been away the entire year. Luckily, I applied for a visa via the General Consulate in New York upon my return the US, and managed to get my new visa a day before returning to the UK. There are any number of words appropriate to describe this experience - down to the wire, skin of my teeth, pure luck - but overall, it’s just another adventure to keep my life entertaining.

Visa issues aside, there was much more that filled my days in the three weeks I which I visited my many homes. I hopped across six states during that time, seeing as much of my family and friends as I could. More than anything, this trip was a chance for me to reconnect, if only briefly, with as many people as I could. Sometimes this meant meeting for coffee for a few hours, sometimes I was able to see them for a few days. It was amazing to learn during these encounters the meaning of seeing someone face to face; of giving them a hug and getting one from them in return. I keep in touch with many of my friends, albeit sporadically at best, but it is mainly over email and perhaps the occasional phone call. These media rarely allow for the two of us to ‘be’ together, though. We share our thoughts, but we can’t see each other’s face, or feel the hugs and the tears.

When I reflect on a friend or family member, I see the way they move, I feel the way they embrace after a long absence, I hear the concern and the joy in their voice, I taste the experiences we’ve shared together. Their beliefs and questions come to mind. So little of these things are conveyed when we are unable to share the same space, at the same table or on the same couch. This I call ‘being’ with the someone else, a term, enlivened for me by my good friend Breia, that means living through experiences with someone who is experiencing them as you are. Who my friends and family are is what it means to be with them. Watered down, you could say to know someone is to be with them.

If that is true, and I believe it is, then nothing would seem to be as important, in terms of friends and family, than the opportunities we have to be together. Nearly all of us, though, live scattered lives, some perhaps not as spread as mine, some undoubtedly more so. Being with our friends and loved ones is infrequently part of our daily routine of work, eat, and sleep. Even if we live in the same town, we may go weeks without sharing a coffee. We may email, but as many of you regrettably know, it can take days, weeks, yes even months for me to respond sometimes. What does it mean, then, to have these friendships and familiar ties, if we so infrequently get a chance to experience them? Is life less full or more full if our ties are many but our time with each is short? Am I not being true to these ties if I am able to give them so little of my time?

I really have mixed feelings about this. I have a lot of gratitude for the friends and family that I have; without them my life wouldn’t be nearly as rich. And yet, the question has been raised if I might be adversely affecting myself and others by being spread too thin. If someone were to complain that we don’t spend enough time together, what would constitute ‘enough’? Surely it would be different for every relationship. It’s also different, I believe, for each person in the relationship. One may feel that evenings and weekends should be spent together; another thinks it’s enough to have a walk together once a term. One would be happy to catch up ‘when we can,’ while another thinks we should purposefully make time for each other each week.

What happens when two people, ‘being’ together, have different expectations on how much time or how many experiences are ‘enough’? What if you both feel that more time should be spent together, but the time just doesn’t exist? My three weeks in America, for a large part, were filled with these questions.

For a long time, I had a conception that when two people meet, they will naturally find an equilibrium between them, a rhythm of interaction that matches their personalities and the existing pulls each already has on their time. That conception has slowly fallen in the past year. If our feelings for each other match, then it is often the case that our lives do not. Sometimes, the reverse is true. I want to make it clear that I’m not only talking about romantic relationships here. The same mismatch occurs in family and with my friends, though my awareness of this is only now really increasing. What should be the outcome of this mismatch? Should one person‚Äôs idea of the interaction rule over the other’s? Should they work out, if only subconsciously, a compromise between each of their desires and environments? Should they continue to muddle through, addressing the hurt feelings and strained emotions when they become too much? Are there more options? Are these options fair to both people?

That last question is perhaps the one that most interests me. In a world where so often things seem to work against us, is there a conception of fairness that can help two people ‘be’ together? Most often, I think we say life is not fair because of the current state of affairs (outcome-based) or the way that state of affairs came about (process-based). Sometimes we impersonalise it by saying that ‘the system’ is not fair because it favours some over others. Fairness invokes notions of equality, which I think is correct, but the type of equality depends on the characteristics of the person who is claiming that something is fair or unfair. If both people invoke the same notion of equality, and agree on the type of fairness they are addressing (outcome or process), they may come to a common view on whether their situation is fair or unfair, but unless it’s fair that is only the first step in working out a lasting friendship or familial tie.

I think the most difficult relationships are when both people see things as being unfair, but there is little they can do to change the situation, either because it is out of their control or because they choose not to shift their environment for the other person (most often, I think it’s a mix of the two). I’m thinking here of instances where both people want to make more time for each other, to be together more, but commitments to work, to other friends, to themselves, etc, don’t allow them to. What to do here, I am not sure.

In any case, though, what my trip to America allowed me to do was to share a bit of my life once again with many of my friends and much of my family. Fairness aside, it was fantastic to see everyone again, and I am thankful for the many new memories I have. For those of you I saw, thank you. For those of you I did not get a chance to connect with, I hope we will be able to do so soon.

Take care,
~Sam