Hockey is different but you still have a team working towards a goal, literally! With a good group of people, good as in nice people, not skilled, you win and lose as a team. Plus the on bench and locker room time means you get to know one another over time.
Cycling is different for me, it is a solo experience and as a result I don't have any friends in that world.
Cycling is different for me, it is a solo experience and as a result I don't have any friends in that world.
I started cycling and was amazed at how social it was (albeit living in a town with a sizable cycling community). In my youth I was a swimmer, and although there is a lot of shared experience/adversity and friendship on any sports team, there's a lot less socializing that can be done while your head is underwater!
It's so lonely being a goalie sometimes. We never get any bench chat except for the short intermissions.
Do you have any references in mind?
It's an easy place to meet 30-40 people in a day, everyone there has different interests and comes from different walks of life. If you attend for a few weeks you'll often start attending lunch together, meeting out at some activities, etc. Plus, all you have to do is show up. People at a church tend to be outgoing, at least some of them are. Someone is bound to reach out to you if you sit there and drink a coffee.
Everybody else "tolerated" the heck out of my gender-bewildered, 'spergie self from the messed up family, but it was the Catholics who finally showed me a love that would actually sacrifice something for my sake. Up until then, I sincerely believed "love" was like "Santa Claus" - a nice story you tell children, but nobody actually believes when they grow up.
Are there some Catholics who wouldn't know love if it came back from the dead? Absolutely. But there are others who stake their lives and well-being on the belief that love is at the center of everything, and wow are they worth meeting.
There are lots of suffering in the world caused by systemic factors. If you think all that matters is that God loves YOU and EVERYBODY then you will probably not spend much time thinking about the systemic causes of suffering, and how to alleviate them.
The thing about religion is it mostly advocates keeping the status quo as is. Religion doesn't demand that you use your brain does it? Whereas if you are serious about making the world a better place then you MUST use your brain.
I know, there is something called Liberation Theology:
https://www.religion-online.org/article/an-evangelical-theol...
"...central biblical doctrines is that God is on the side of the poor and the oppressed. Tragically, evangelical theology has largely ignored this doctrine"
Right...
lol really? Define evil. I view evil as anything that leads to disorder in the world (death, destruction, etc); churches do not do that - they often build people up, build in the community, etc.
> I find it difficult to believe that someone who is depressed needs to hear that they're a sinner heading to hell unless they accept whatever precepts the particular church is pushing.
I'm fairly certain 99% of them preach the opposite?
They'll say "here are all the bad things we do", "we are saved because we attempt to do good and believe in God [or if christian - Jesus sacrificed himself for all people, living and dead]"
Christians really preach self-reflection and atonement - aka be humble. Frankly, the world can use more of that.
As a note I went to church every sunday growing up - my parents (not religious) did it for exactly the reasons you described. Because we weren't religious there are some things that aren't a good fit even if its with other kids (confirmation meetings - I was very reasonably asked not to attend after asking questions because I was confused about the whole thing). There is a wide range of religious orthodoxy as well - plenty of mellower denominations.
While indeed time is important, it does not mean that merely spending time with somebody creates a friendship between you. It is more the quality of the time than time itself and, sadly, often our lives do not make quality easy to find. Especially regarding "hobbies and interests", personally I have found that relationships formed just through them tend to be more superficial and lasting less than relationships which are formed in a multitude of contexts and circumstances rather than simply spending time on one interest. They are good ways to meet new people, but for me an analogue of watching football together 2 or 10 hours per week and not other common context has never really worked out.
I like the approach of this blog post bellow on this. I think that especially the part of sharing life struggles together to be quite important.
That blog's point to ask for help to create connections is a classic technique, super effective as well. Neighbors asking to borrow small things from each other is a great example of this bit of psychology in action.
Anyway, even though I only spent a couple of hours with my fellow passengers on that boat, I felt more bonded to them than most people I met in almost a year backpacking and stayed in touch with them for a long time on Facebook.
So interesting that that's some kind of inbuilt thing. Like the OP, I also struggle making friends otherwise like which makes this more curious to me.
I used to run a startup focused on this, here is what I learned:
Time. The answer is time. Research shows there are two ways long term bonds are formed, shared adversity[1], or lots of time spent together. General rule of thumb for relationship building:
1. 10 hours together is someone you know 2. 100 hours together is a good acquittance. 3. 1000 hours together is a good friend and a relationship that can now last a long time
This is why activities such as football watching (3*18, 54 hours a year, 2 years and you now have the beginnings of a good friends circle), or weekly poker matches (2 hours, almost 100 hours in a year) are so effective at building relationships.
Interpersonal hobbies with lots of down time, like rock climbing or playing in a band, accelerate this process greatly.
For people with kids, weekly play dates, or a weekly rotated dinner hosting.
Friendship is literally grinding hours, when we are young it is easy, studying and hanging out get those hours in, but when we get older, we have to be purposeful about it.
[1] Military boot camps are an example of this, so are the various culture wars. If you make people feel they are part of an oppressed group, preferably while isolating them from society at large, you will forms a cohesive group that acts together and one where everyone feels connected to each other. "Both sides" of the political spectrum do this, once you learn to spot it you start seeing it everywhere.