Reconciliation and Building Relationships

Introduction

Playing video games is enjoyable and is a very fun way to spend your free-time playing. Although frustrating at times with terrible teammates or internet issues, we tend to find a couple of good and enjoyable people to play with. Winstreaks start to build into the double digits, and you've improved your rank significantly from the day before. If you have been in this situation, you should definitely try to friend that teammate and play with them more often because that will build a meaningful connection over something you both care about.

Common Interest:

It’s hard to be friends with everyone in the world. People have their own goals and aspirations, and it’s rare to find someone with similar ones to yourself. In a school of 2 to 3 thousand individuals. You’ll be lucky to find more than 5-10 people who have at least 3 things in common with you. At first, you wouldn’t believe it; it sounds ludicrous. But that is because there are hundreds and thousands of different activities, hobbies, opportunities, and time-consuming things people can choose from. Let's use a sports player as an example.

 What is the possibility of a basketball player making friends with another basketball player? If there are 15 kids on a roster, the sample is already shrunk to 15. There might be individuals who may enjoy a sport, but do not participate in school teams for a particular reason, but that itself falls under its own category. The goal is to find someone with at least 3 things in common with you. Even if we generalize basketball, there are probably fewer than 100 kids in a school of 2500 because there are numerous different sports alone.  We can use 15 and 100 and continue the probability test. 

Let's say a basketball player also enjoys playing an instrument, and they take classes and practice for several hours a week.  The odds of finding someone who is a basketball player and plays an instrument are extremely rare in that sample pool. Approximately 1-3 people in a pool of 100 would play the same instrument and play basketball. Dozens of people play an instrument, but those same people may not play basketball or any sport, for that matter. This is a major reason why finding and building meaningful connections can be pretty difficult. Now we can try to generalize playing instruments rather than a specific one. We can use 20 kids in a sample size of 100, which is 1/5th of the total.  So, out of a school of 2500 students, there is a 1/125 chance to find someone who plays basketball while playing an instrument. This data can be skewed depending on environment, culture, and circumstance. If you go to a primarily academic school compared to an arts or sports school, you will probably find almost no one because of the culture there. This is not something that should demoralize you into finding new relationships, but it should be something to help you build truly meaningful connections and ones that last a lifetime. If we were to include a third activity, the probability would be even lower. 

Why Finding Like-Minded Individuals is Harder than Before:

To state simply, it is very excruciating and difficult to find someone who genuinely has the same interests as us and actually puts forth effort to see meaningful results. People have been fixated on adapting to the norm and global culture, but this completely eradicates uniqueness and innovation. Great business, athletes, students, doctors, and professionals are unique and go against the common norm. If the standard is to get a 70 on a test, aim for an 80. If the standard is to play basketball 3-4 times for practice, if possible, aim for up to 6 times a week. Technology and significant advancements in various fields have made us lazy and rely too much on external factors to complete our day-to-day lives. When relying on these factors, you start to care less and only want a dopamine rush from an online video. You start to lose interest in everything, and this relates to millions of people around the world.  In a perfect world, you could probably find a couple dozens individuals with similar goals and aspirations to yourself, but if everyone thinks and acts the same. You’ll be treated as an outcast.

Conclusion:

When you play a game with a great teammate, actually try to friend them instead of immediately queuing up for the next game, because you might have lost a great person to talk and connect with. You shouldn’t feel scared to try because if they reject you, there are countless opportunities to run into another great teammate.