Find a Quarter, Pick It Up, All Lifelong You'll Have Good Luck

20 nickels makes one dollar

and so does 10 dimes,

and 100 pennies.

But if I were to choose my preferred form of dollar in coins, I would pick quarters.

Not only are they singlehandedly worth more but they’re also easier to keep track of.

Whenever I clean my room and find a penny on the floor, I usually just throw it away. Why? Because it’s the closest coin to worthless. It would be more of an annoyance to carry around a bunch of pennies than to just get rid of them.

In actuality, what can you really buy with one penny?

I used to want tons of friends.

I dreamed of my older self and hoped that she was popular and had an abundant amount of people to choose from.

I tried making plans with every new person I met, every person in my class, every person I found out I had one thing in common with.

“We should hangout sometime! When are you free? Let’s go to the game together!”

And if we couldn’t find the time to hangout, we would at least have a streak on Snapchat.

But this started to feel like a full-time job.

I was drained all the time and unfulfilled. Having a bunch of friends soon became an idea I no longer wished to adopt.

You’re not allowed to forget about someone’s birthday, or forget to text them, or to cancel plans. You’re spread thin in a chokehold and everyone is expecting you to perform a particular way. They anticipate different benefits and dream of certain outcomes for your friendship with them and when you don’t meet those, you’re a terrible person.

You feel like you have to constantly be checking in on all of these people, making sure everyone is satisfied and remembers you exist. But when there’s too many to tend to, you lose track and the friendships start to become very surface level and all about quantity.

The reality is, we don’t even have that much time and energy to go around.

We shouldn’t make promises we physically cannot keep.

Our energy is sacred and our time should be spent intentionally.

Now think of your friendships as coins.

Carrying around 100 pennies is the equivalent to having 100 friends that you wouldn’t care to lose.

Ones you would throw away if you found them on the ground. Ones that you couldn’t turn to in times of need. You couldn’t even depend on five of these friends for one gumball out of a machine at the mall.

I like to call these Penny Friendships. The friends that talk behind your back and then write H.A.G.S. in your yearbook.

When we disburse our energy in tiny increments, it feels close to useless. It’s like giving someone a single penny.

Gee. Thanks.

Now split your dollar (or your energy) into 4 quarters.

What could you do with one quarter? A lot more than you could with one penny that’s for sure.

You can do your laundry with that quarter.

They’re fun to collect.

You could pay for parking with that quarter.

(and if you live in Long Beach you know this is a BIG DEAL)

You typically don’t find them on the ground. Just like a good friend, they’re harder to come by.

Your quarter friendships are the ones you should cherish and give more attention to.

“Your heart is not a possession. It’s a place. A place for people to visit, to invest in, and some people can be permanent residents.”

Your quarter friendships are your investors, your home owners.

I hold onto 4 quarters in my metaphorical wallet at all times.

I like to call them Peyton, Lexie, Mitchell, and Sarah.

Sarah, being myself, and the rest, are the individuals pictured below.

An ASB President, Senior Class President, projected Salutatorian and Cross Country book nerd walk into their AP Gov class, innocently choose to sit at one table together, and soon enough, they’re talking about their kids calling us aunt and uncle.

These people became my quarters.

We ate lunch together almost everyday of Senior year.

We competed in track meets alongside each other, spent holidays together, practically lived together.

I stopped picking up pennies that year. My 3 quarters completed my whole dollar and I no longer felt the need to carry around any other coin in my wallet.

We haven’t been friends for very long compared to most solid friend groups. But it doesn’t matter how long you’ve had that quarter, it matters what you do with that quarter.

And as time goes on, I am constantly reminded that no bond compares to the one I hold with these 3 people.

“These people loved me because they knew me. They saw me. and They related to me. We looked at life with the same big, wondrous eyes. We were apart of something bigger.”

They hit home. They never judge me. They challenge me to be the best version of myself.

And no matter what, I know they always defend my name when I’m not around.

I can tell them anything outlandish and they’ll either counter it or accept it as one of my crazy ideas. But either way, they always listen, and that’s all I want sometimes.

On this day after Thanksgiving reflections, I note that these are the people I am most thankful for.

A couple months ago I was in a really bad place mentally.

The only person I told was my boyfriend at the time but he was drunk so that conversation went nowhere.

The state of our current world really got to my head and I felt extremely hopeless.

I was looking at life in a way I never had before. It was dark and I cried a lot of tears into my pillow.

The hate, the politics, the separation, the wars, the bad news, the control, the reckless trends, it consumed my brain.

Every time I stepped out of the house, the corruption is all I noticed.

The evil in being a sales associate for fast fashion, the media twisting headlines to conform your thinking, people pretending to like you to get free artwork out of you.

And every time I spoke about these things, nobody seemed to relate or care about peace between the people in the ways that I did.

There was no progressive conversation. Just, “yeah it’s really sad.”

The only path I saw in front of me was a dead end.

I started reaching for resources I never thought I would and texted a suicide hotline one night.

I think I was on hold for about 2 hours until I finally got a real person to talk to.

And by the time I finally did, my eyes were so swollen all I wanted to do was go to bed and escape reality.

In the midst of my storm and 2 hour wait time, I received a message in our “OG Lunch Dates” groupchat that consists of me and my 3 best friends.

I don’t remember exactly what the topic of conversation was that night but I do remember everyone’s bitmoji heads popping into the chat at the same time.

What we talked about was meaningless.

Meaningless in topic, but not in presence.

That night these people eased me, and although they don’t know it, they’re one of the reasons I’m still here today.

I won’t ever end my life on purpose but I can’t say that I haven’t contemplated it before.

The thought of leaving these people behind pained me and literally made me feel guilty to know that if I left, they would be hurting.

The importance of this friendship makes me cry every time I think about it.

We often have people in our lives that we are eternally grateful for but don’t ever tell them until maybe Thanksgiving rolls around and even then it seems a bit timely.

If someone means a lot to you, you should tell them.

Miles away that night but they were the only ones I felt close to.

Seeing their little bitmoji faces reminded me that there are people out there that love me, unconditionally, no matter the distance between us.

People that see me, that hear me, that want to listen to me.

They are my sliver of home everywhere I go, the quarters in my wallet.

I started thinking of things on a much smaller scale, starting with my small circle, where things felt a lot more manageable and a lot less scary.

World peace is nearly impossible, but inner, individual peace is not.

And that is why I include myself in this quarter equation.

To complete my dollar, I need to give energy to me too.

Happiness is a light that will always come from within, you have to turn it on yourself. Other people just help make it brighter.

Sometimes our light goes out and we go to therapy to learn how to turn it back on.

Sometimes it’s just dimmer than usual.

Friendships fluctuate.

Sometimes you’re giving 20% energy to the bulb while the other person is giving 80%.

This is normal. It’s human. I think it’s something a lot of people fail to understand and instead adhere to anger to express the amount of effort or lack thereof.

Push each other, but do it gently.

Give advice, but listen to what they have to say first.

And know that connection is the best medicine, so stock up.

I don’t want to emphasize surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals, because that’s not always the best case scenario.

In fact, we disagree on a lot of things.

Variety creates open-minds.

And the fact that we all have very different interests, is not only more exciting but also more knowledgeable.

Peyton will talk to you about law enforcement for hours. Mitchell will explain math to you that exists in the most mind-blowing ways. Lexie will tell you about all of her patients and their different medical debacles.

We learn a lot from each other.

I was watching a Ted Talk not long after this night titled, “How to Magically Connect with Anyone”

and in it, Brian Miller said,

“It’s not enough to care about somebody; it’s not enough to understand them. They have to feel understood. They have to feel cared about.”

Peyton, Lexie, and Mitchell make me feel understood.

The importance of finding people that can do this for you, could be the difference between life and death.

We are not always aligned in our beliefs but that’s okay, in fact, it’s almost better because it allows more room for growth.

The conversations we have together are always filled with complexity. We talk about bigger picture phenomenon’s, the universe, society, potential.

Our friendship was different back then, we’ve matured quite a bit, but now I love them for different reasons, deeper reasons.

Lexie sends me book recommendations, fictional books, ones I would’ve never picked up in the first place. But these books expand my imagination, they stray me away from reality in the perfect amount.

She wholeheartedly listens and looks you in the eye when she does.

She’s soft spoken but also has a goofy, strong-willed side that not everyone sees in the beginning.

She housed me when I didn’t want to go home, letting me inside late at night with no questions asked.

She works tremendously hard in her studies and has an insane amount of patience for the people she nurses.

My friendship with her came out of nowhere, it’s one of those you never would’ve pictured but here we are almost 3 years later talking about attending each other’s weddings.