Last year, the president of the Yoga club and I (the vice president) were at the yearly info meetings that club officers have to attend when I met a girl who would end up being an important friend. She introduced herself as the president of the Holistic Health Club and we conversed with her and her VP a bit before the event. Our clubs meshed well, so we decided to make sure our schedules didn’t conflict and occasionally advertised each other’s events on the club Facebook pages. Beyond that we all became Facebook friends on our personal pages and I couldn’t help but notice that she posted a lot about Twenty One Pilots, a band that had recently become near and dear to my heart. So I of course decided that I needed to be friends with this person. But how? I had other commitments on the night her club met and we had no classes together, our only connection was Facebook. Well, it seemed outside forces would not create favorable circumstances for me, I had to make them myself. There are plenty of coffee shops on campus, we could get coffee, everybody likes coffee right? But what if we run out of things to talk about? What if it’s awkward? It was.
The long pauses in conversation didn’t stop us from talking about what Twenty One Pilots meant to each of us. The fact that I misheard every other thing she said because I was tired did not stop us from bonding over our experiences dealing with mental illness. None of the awkwardness stopped us from becoming friends with a valuable impact in each others’ lives. The awkwardness did not automatically equal failure. I don’t have to feel bad about being awkward sometimes. I would still much rather not be awkward but it is a comfort to know that it won’t prevent me from interacting meaningfully with others.
Why does any of this matter? Because this realization gave me courage and I hope you can derive some courage from it too. Don’t let the fear of a situation being awkward stop you from reaching out to others. That is easier said than done but it will never be done if you don’t even consider trying. Putting aside my own fears of social ineptitude doesn’t always yield life-changing reward but it opens the door for it. Sometimes awkwardness holds us back because we try so hard to avoid it not because it actually messes anything up. So take courage! Embrace awkward moments and go forth unfettered by fear.
