Why I’m Designing a Phone That Waits

I am looking for some friends. My Sangha. (संघ ~ Sanskrit for "community")

Since 2018.

I travelled far & wide, through many nations & villages,

through all kinds of spaces, through a million faces…

I flew and fell in and out of love a zillion times over,

and.. yet here i am,

…still looking for some friends. My Sangha.

I discovered — in this 9 year-long journey of looking for these friends — that I am not feeling this utter, crazy isolation because of the lack of people as there are many who would like to be my friend — but the lack of the ones who I would like to be friends with. I know I am interesting but rarely, am I interested.

Because the friends I am looking for are, turns out, no ordinary creatures —

they are the ones who listen. Deeply. Without interrupting. They stay and don’t just leave when I talk about my deepest fears or my grief. Or when I let my nine-tailed fox out.

they are the ones who have traversed the deep oceans of their being and so, aren’t fearful of swimming with me there.

they don’t confuse friendship with coaching or mentorship or therapy… there is no transactionality or a saviour complex in them.

when a conflict arises — instead of ghosting, defending, deflecting and dismissing — they can respectfully pause, self-reflect and resolve to go deeper with me.

they don’t talk endlessly about themselves — one story after another — & then, restlessly wait for their turn to speak when I am speaking rather they just be with this quality which is neither just patience nor just being… it’s —

in Hindi, there is a word for this quality — “ठहराव" (Therav). It means stopping or pausing. From within this existential loneliness, I long for a friend who embodies “ठहराव”.