How To Find Connections Between People?

How many people can I keep track of?

• I'm astonished by the sheer number of people with whom I interact in my life. How many of them can I realistically expect to keep track of in the years to come? Are my experiences normal? Does the rate of establishing new connections, as well as deepening existing connections, stand to slow down over time, or will it keep going at something like the present rate? Apologies in advance for what may be kind of a weird question, but I find myself amazed and a little baffled by the sheer number of people with whom I interact. How can I keep everyone straight? Is there some sort of mental limit to this ability? I'm 39 and have lived in the same city for about 15 years. I find that I have a LOT of people with whom I interact on a relatively frequent basis, not only in my home city, but in places across the country. I'm increasingly wondering how long I'll be able to keep everything straight in my mind, and whether my old memories will be supplanted by newer ones. Some examples might help: - I can still remember a lot of the people with whom I grew up, in a small city perhaps an hour away from my current location. I am in periodic touch with some of them, and my parents, who still live there, give me regular updates on people from the neighborhood or church, too. - My family has spread across the country but we stay in touch at major holidays and, to a degree, via social media. - I'm on my fourth job, each of which has been a sizable organization. I am on good terms with many former co-workers, but I remember details of the lives of even those with whom I don't keep in touch regularly. - My current job is with a non-profit and I am finding lots of ties and interactions, through personal connections, to folks I knew from prior jobs. Some specific recent examples, all from the past few weeks: - My mother was invited to the shower for a high school friend who is pregnant. I got the whole lowdown on who attended, what's going on in all of their lives, etc. - A friend from church died. After the memorial service I got a chance to connect with her children, who I remember from a job 10 years ago where I assisted them in a professional capacity. - A former business contact who lives in the Midwest has an affiliation with my East Coast non-profit, and I had the chance to engage him in a new and unexpected way through my current job. - I had lunch with two friends from my first job in town, 15 years ago - I can remember their spouses' and children's names, ages, jobs we've all had in the intervening years, who worked with us then, etc. - I went for a run in my old neighborhood and saw the 1970s car that my old neighbor still owns. It brought back memories of him and all of the other immediate neighbors, some of whom I keep in touch with to this day. - My cousin reached out to me on LinkedIn for a professional referral. I wound up putting him in touch with a friend from a job from over a decade ago who works in that field. Had a nice follow-up chat with that friend about his wife and children, who I remember well but haven't seen in many years. I am reasonably outgoing and intelligent, with a good memory for people's stories and backgrounds, but I don't think I'm some sort of "connector" or extraordinarily proficient in making these connections. They just seem to have happened organically. I imagine that a lot of it is due to the prevalence of social media, my increasing ties to my city of residence (in terms of both the breadth and depth of my social ties with others), and simply being at an age where I am old enough to have a sense of history with relationships from my childhood but young enough not to be too far distant from relationships formed in the past decade or so. What I'm really curious about is whether there is some sort of limit to this ever-expanding web of connections. Twenty-five years from now, am I going to be flashing back to an old friend of my parents, while in the next minute getting an update on, say, my kid's college roommate's children? My brain feels a little full as it is, sometimes, keeping track of everyone! Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

• Answer:

  You have an unusually good memory for these kinds of details. Most of us forget the details of most of what you described.