People are amazing. I’m lucky to have a lot of good friends of all sorts of backgrounds, and I’m learning constantly from each one of my friends. I have always been the sort of person to focus on and value my relationships with other people; my “tribe” comes above everything else.

I’ve also grown up in a world where my “tribe” can consist of people from almost anywhere in the world, with a vast array of experiences, skills, and personalities. My world is vast, but I (and certainly people older than I am) can still remember a time when it wasn’t, and I’ve had a front-row seat for the massive change in the world.

Where once the only contact you might have with someone a few cities over or in another country was a pen pal, now some of my best, longest-lasting friends are ones who I rarely if ever see face-to-face. More and more, what it means to have a relationship, to be friends with someone, or just to meet someone new has become divorced from the physical world. As humans, we are wired to make our initial judgements about someone based on their appearance, but the Internet frequently denies us that capability. We can meet one another and form bonds without that bias, and the fallout from that is endlessly fascinating to me.