Lingering in Doorways

Recently, I stumbled upon a Tumblr post — yes, Tumblr still exists, and you should get back on it — that made use of the term “bid for connection.” The post reads, “When someone offers you a bid for connection, you say yes every time. When someone sends you an article, a video, a funny post, it’s a bid for connection. They are trying to connect with you.” I had previously seen a tweet on X that mentioned the same thing: “Your soul dies a little each time the vulnerable bid for connection is denied.” Something about that turn of phrase, bids for connection, stuck with me. I particularly love the use of the word “bid,” denoting an offer, like there’s some kind of risk or gamble involved. It’s interesting. In the midst of a rapidly growing loneliness epidemic, something I think about on a near-daily basis, the need for social connection is greater and perhaps more necessary than ever. People need people. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are always looking for ways to connect.

I encounter so many people in my daily work life. Hundreds a week, most of them strangers. I talk openly about how my job has helped upgrade my social skills to an almost shocking degree, and how I’ve become an expert at making small talk with people I don’t know. Some of these conversations are transactional — come-and-go interactions, brisk and business-like. But a surprising number of them hold weight. It takes less than a minute to refund an item or make a Redcard payment. But in that one minute, I can learn how a person’s day is going, where they’re off to next, how they are liking the Poppi drink they’re holding. I can be asked if work is slow, where my sweater is from, what I do to give my curls their fluff. And while many of these questions have their own perfunctory answers, once in a while you stumble on something honest. I’ve been given book suggestions from waiters that turn out to be life-changing reads. I think often about a young mom I always came out to greet at drive-ups that has since moved to Chicago. And though it’s understood that after these instances we might not ever see each other again, and that most of the time we gain nothing substantial from these exchanges, these bids for connection are still made. And more often than not, they are enthusiastically reciprocated.

Something about this has always struck me as deeply poetic. That to participate is to be reminded that there are billions of other people in the world whose lives operate in completely separate spheres from our own, and that it is a rarity when they intersect. We are so used to communicating with people only when we want something from them, and reserving our energy for our circles, that more often than not we deny the bids for connection we receive from those outside of them. I know that before moving to America, and before my experiences at work, I wasn’t as receptive towards strangers I have nothing in common with; I was taught that my first instinct in these situations should be wariness, that there is nothing to be gained by being friendly and everything to lose. But does talking to strangers have to be such a bad thing? Concerns of safety aside (that’s a different conversation) we miss out on so much when we close ourselves off to other humans, no matter how minuscule the impact may be. We should talk to each other more.

These bids aren’t reserved for strangers, by the way, or people we are just getting acquainted with. We make them all the time to those we already know. And though this is a much more obvious application for most people — of course I make attempts to connect with my friends and family members, you say, I talk to them all the time — I find that there will always be some who feel the need to be better at maintaining the relationships in their lives. I know this because I am one of them. So much so that I might as well be the poster child for it. I am, by almost all counts, a notorious ghoster — it’s a behavior I’ve struggled with since junior high. My friendship comes with a disclaimer: I can love you to literal death, miss you terribly, and still not reply. So many of my relationships have tapered out this way. And though my closest friends have since accepted that this might just always be the case with me, especially with the distance, I struggle with the guilt that I can always be better, and that I should be. The most important people in my life deserve to feel that they are.

I think what I may have struggled to understand — and what I am only now just beginning to grasp — is that my craving for connection, my desire to reach out, is so easily remedied. Not every conversation has to be an intense, emotional roller coaster of a catch-up. Sometimes it’s as simple as a quick “I was listening to this song, and I thought of you.” You get to choose to be an active participant in strengthening that bond. I used to have Locket — thinking about it now, I should probably re-download it on my phone — that was great for this. A quick snap of your day, a movie you watched or a meal you ate — check, that’s a bid. I don’t know why we try to make human connection seem so unnecessarily complicated. (Note: This is not a dig but a question I’m posing to myself.) It really is not.

This is the point where I share the Fleabag quote this entire essay has been leading up to, which is that “People are all we’ve got.” People are all we’ve got. Why are we here, if not for each other?

As I am growing older, and as I navigate the throes of loss and heartbreak that come with it, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that the number of hours we have with people are not always as large as we hope they might be. The presence we have in each other’s lives is fleeting. That to me only proves that we should treasure the moments we do have with other people, no matter how small and seemingly inconsequential, no matter if it is a minute or several minutes or more. To ask an opinion, to wish someone well, to urge them to take care. To want them to know that they are loved and deeply cared for. To understand that at the end of the day, we all want to be seen. To see.

With that in mind, I would love to direct you towards some my favorite media on the power of love and friendship and strangers and human connection. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, of course, is a great place to start. I like the poem Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris. Perhaps The World Ends Here by Joy Harjo. This Tumblr web weave. Someone New by Hozier. And of course — you already knew this was coming — The Orange by Wendy Cope.