I recently had an outing with some of my friends the other day. It had been about 2 years since I’d ever spoken to them, and for the entire summer holiday since I’d broken up from school after A-Levels I had been itching to see them again, but if not for one of my friends, this would not have been the case, most likely.

I was a cynical child, which is not a typical mindset for someone so small. I naturally believed that friends were mostly self-serving, uncaring, and that most conversations were built with the sole purpose of attracting attention to oneself rather than a mutual, egalitarian exchange of ideas.

I carried that belief for a lot of my life and inevitably became a cynical teen. I would spend most of my time alone because a lot of social interactions felt really draining to me and I found it hard to believe that people really had an interest in me beyond using me as a soundboard or whatever suited their agenda at the time.

But as I get a bit older, I start to thank myself for the day I decided to step out of my comfort zone and empirically challenge my views. The thing is, when you internalise something from a young age: whether that be the idea that most people do not care about you, or that you don’t need friends, or that everyone’s out to get you or something like that, it is really easy to just fall deeper into the rabbit hole you’ve created for yourself because all you surround yourself with is all that you know. Without taking the time to allow yourself to be hurt occasionally all for a greater purpose, you become well acquainted with your preconceptions but to everything else, you remain a stranger.

The truth of the matter is that for a lot of the people you meet, there will be many who secretly do not want you to do well in life, some who wish against you, some who give you false advice, but the few people you keep in contact with (or wish you kept in contact with more often) are truly worth all the horrible things you could expose yourself to

As someone who has been cynical for so long, it is easy to understand why most people at this age would tell themselves they “don’t need friends” because “friends only hold you back”. But with many simple statements in life, it is a gross understatement that doesn’t fully encapsulate the full package that comes with allowing people into your life. Cynicism protects you from potential harm because in it you don’t have to be vulnerable. Unfortunately, to get to a place where you feel you belong, you need to take the risk.

I am not promising that you will figure things out from the first day, nor am I promising that you won’t regret putting yourself out there some days, particularly if you are also prone to being shy. If you’ve been in this position before, you’ve probably had no shortage of people preaching the virtues of living a social life, with aggravating platitudes like “no man is an island”. While I’d be inclined to say all of that stuff is true regardless, I did not become converted from listening to all the self-righteous people trying to tell me how to live my life. What I suggest above anything else is to challenge your preconceptions.

For a month of two: forget about your cynicism, your self-image, your idea of how others perceive you, and just talk to people from time to time. Put yourself out there, introduce yourself first. Tell people about the way you feel and open up every once in a while. Initially, it will feel disorienting and unnatural. Personally, I felt like that for a very long time, years actually. But it is only when I reunited with my secondary school friends, some whom I’d known since the very start, and watched how they had developed so many deep relationships with others. I noticed with great admiration how many of my friends had laughed with others, suffered with others, cried with others and at the end of the day had stories to tell about it. I looked at myself and how much I’d changed since I was in Year 7, dealing with multiple fake friends and embittered by years of being left on the sidelines. They had felt pain too, just like me, but they had people to share in it and people to support them at times of strife. I am proud to have friends like that.

It will be rocky, but it will be worth it. And soon, I only hope that I will get to the point where I’ll be able to conversate with the same ease as those whom I admire so passionately. Some people are truly a gift to this world; you just have to find them.