As someone who frequently changes cities, and job locations I often rely on temporary people to enrich my social and intellectual life. These are people who are neither tied to us by familial or biological nor by marital bonds. They are not our childhood friends or college buddies. Yet, they become an important part of our lives in a very short period.
There can be friendship, physical intimacy, and emotional reliance on these people to a great extent. It is also possible these bonds may not last a lifetime. Once you change the job or city, you might not have frequent access to each other either. You may never really take the effort to travel to a certain place just to meet them. And yet, they are no less important. The temporary people in our life give us a sense of belonging in an increasingly unstable world. They help you through a bad breakup or survive a toxic workplace or a tyrannical boss.
They are temporary because they meet all your current needs. When we are away from home, we find a home in them. Sometimes, they feel like family, and others feel like soulmates for a very small period, helping you experience the scripts and complexes of belonging and socialisation that are embedded in our psychological systems. You may play out the role of a brother-sister relationship or that of a lover with them.
Relationships do not exist outside the time-space matrix. The experience of the relationship is more important than the relationship itself. And temporary people give you a glimpse into that beautiful experience. They keep you comforted, and do not let you drift too far off from the human touch and other such exclusively emotional privileges that only one person can give another in flesh and blood.
It’s like getting a spa or being pulled into the world of a 3D animated film. The holistic, nourishing experience makes these relationships unique, mostly because there is no other transaction or vows except for the promise of providing each other with a replica of the real-life relationship. No frills and attachments, no expectations involved.
But one can only ever fully temporarily love these in-the-moments. The very thrill of this relationship is in the fact that they do not have to last forever. But the level of intimacy and yearning for them is just the same. One has to navigate these relationships with a certain sense of abundance — the belief that beautiful human connections are possible anywhere and everywhere and one doesn’t have to cling to someone.
The moment we start operating from a place of scarcity, we start looking for forever in our temporary family and soulmates. We become possessive and clingy, taking away from the lightness of the relationship. The trust in human connection can see us through all kinds of displacements — be it political, economic or any other reason. Temporary people are just as important as the forevers.
(The writer is a mental health and behavioural sciences columnist, conducts art therapy workshops and provides personality development sessions for young adults. She can be found @the_millennial_ pilgrim on Instagram and Twitter)
