Making friends is not necessarily easy. Whether this realization occurs as the result of moving to a new city or during the first week of your freshman year at college, the elementary-school-you that could nonchalantly start a conversation with someone on the playground or build a whole relationship off of a shared appreciation for Lisa Frank is an enviable individual. The casualty of connecting with others seems to have been lost with baby teeth.

Going beyond joint interests and cohesive personalities, an extreme pressure is put on twenty-somethings to have the right friends, or at least the right amount of friends. The number of likes on an Instagram post directly correlates to your worth as an individual, to your rank in the social rat race. In essence, making friends as an adult is just good marketing. You advertise for yourself, showcasing the qualities that make you worth spending time with (humor, a wide array of stimulating and unique interests, a car) while also evaluating your audience (in this case, the prospective friend) and their perception of your message.

What has been lost since when we left the playground is actually something gained: hyper-consciousness, both of self and perception. We have been forced to question what we bring to a table in a friendship, rather than readily accepting who we are as worthy enough to validate the sharing of someone else’s time. That is not to say that relationships do not require or deserve effort, merely that the ulterior motives or self-doubt that characterize adult relationships are conduits of unhealthy personal sensitivity of worth.

In elementary school, you were so comfortable and confidently aware of who you were. You were someone who liked dinosaurs or played soccer. You were a future doctor or lover of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As kids, we were so eerily in tune with our personal value as distinctive and dynamic individuals that making friends was purely for the mutually beneficial gift of shared experience. Playgrounds witness the evolution of self-worth, of body image and of the introduction of self-reflective judgment. In the span between monkey bars and barstools we are introduced a value system with which we begin to compare ourselves to others. We become acutely cognizant of how others see us, and subsequently model our behavior to fit the person we want the world to see.

The act of “making” friends speaks to the transformative nature of attempting to find people to validate the worthiness of your time. Friendships are not “made,” in the sense that they are formed or created by an exterior source. Friendships are made up of individuals coming together to celebrate each other as imperfect but completely valid people. Whether these homages to honesty occur in commonplace acts of shared meals or watching TV, or in milestone moments of birthdays or shared graduations, the manifestation of friends stems from first being comfortable with yourself. Start by respecting what you contribute to the bonds you form, and the ensuing relationships will accurately reflect, not only the person you are, but the one you aspire to be.