Nobody tells you when childhood ends. There is no ceremony, no threshold, no morning where you wake and declare yourself an adult. It is a slow accumulation of events, each one pulling you a little further from the boy you were, until one day you look up and realize you have crossed some distance you never agreed to travel.
I felt that distance today, standing in a pool.
I was there with my family, nothing on my mind but being present with them. I was watching a boy I love play in the water when another boy his age walked up to him and asked a question I have not heard in decades:
"Hey, do you want to be my friend?"
The boy I love said, "Yeah."
They traded names. And for the next hour, they played like they had known each other their whole lives.
I watched them, and a question rose in me that I could not put down. What did I do to make connecting with another human being so complicated?
Because I have been where that boy stood. I have walked into rooms full of people and felt the weight of introducing myself. Hundreds of networking events, corporate mixers, conferences. And in nearly every one, something crept in. Insecurity. Calculation. The quiet math of what this person could do for me, or what they might think of me.
The child asks, "Do you want to be my friend?" The adult asks, "What is the angle?"
When did we make that trade? And what exactly did we get for it?
I suspect social media carries some of the blame. We have learned to perform connection instead of practicing it, to curate ourselves so thoroughly that a plain, unguarded introduction feels almost dangerous. That boy at the pool had no profile to protect. He had nothing to offer but himself, and it turned out that was enough. It has always been enough. We are the ones who stopped believing it.
Here is what unsettles me most: that boy was not doing anything remarkable. He was doing what humans do before we teach them not to. Which means the awkwardness I feel in a room full of strangers is not natural. It was learned. And anything learned can be unlearned.
So the question I am carrying home from the pool is not really about networking. It is this: what would it cost me to walk up to someone with no agenda, no armor, no expectation, and simply offer myself? And why does that question scare me more than any boardroom ever has?
Just a thought from the water. I do not know yet where it leads. But I know I do not want to forget it.