There was a time when I got giddy about landing at the airport.
I’d rush to connect to airport WiFi, flushed with the thrill of arrival, expectant of the open arms of friends, shaking a bottle of champagne from afar, big smiles on their faces as they all shout: welcome back!
This time, though, as I roll my suitcase past customs and into the arrival hall, there is no fanfare.
Just a quiet stream of travellers and hotel staff holding up signs with printed names.
What was I expecting? After all, I never asked to be picked up in the first place.
I told myself it was not a big deal — why bother when the Grab home is just a click away?
However, as I stood waiting for a driver to ping his arrival, the loneliness hit me harder than I thought it would.
Source: Kenneth Surillo on Canva, for illustration purposes only
We hear a lot about young people everywhere feeling lonely, with more and more young people left grappling with social isolation despite social media keeping us connected 24/7.
In many ways, this very connectivity, with its “aspirational living”, “brand yourself” culture, is keeping us more isolated.
What was once a means to keep in touch with friends and family has become a platform for consumption, attention, and comparison.
However, in Singapore, the loneliness epidemic seems more uniquely engineered — especially after the pandemic, which stalled interpersonal development and stunted our ability to relate to one another.
Young people in Singapore, now socially undercooked and unsure how to engage beyond a screen, also have to grapple with social infrastructures that make it hard to make (and keep) friendships.
Source: Dragonimages on Canva, for illustration purposes only
In Singapore, the social scaffolding — comprising family, school friends, army buddies (for men), then work friends — is unique.
When elsewhere, young people scatter after graduation; here, our circles, built based on proximity, not choice, remain stubbornly unchanged until marriage.
While there is nothing wrong with this, we may find that the people we loved at 15 may no longer fit who we are at 25 or 35.
When proximity ends, when school friends grow up, get married, get BTO, and you find that you are in totally different stages in life, it gets harder to relate.
Source: maridav on Canva, for illustration purposes only
Even with work friends, the bond sometimes does not go deeper than complaining about management.
I’m not saying that keeping school friends is bad, but it does leave the question:
What happens when the people you used to be close to are not around anymore?
According to psychotherapist Esther Perel, making friends is the first free-choice relationship we have.
Socialising is like a muscle, and if we stop using it, it weakens.
When we get too used to friendships being handed to us on a silver platter, we stop learning how to put in the effort.
To make a friend, you have to become one.
Real connections need more than just being near someone — they need us to actually try.
In Singapore, one-click convenience rules our lives.
From Grab food to Shopee, there is no one item on the to-do list you cannot tick off with just a tap.
This same convenience mindset has also permeated into our relationships.
There was a time when things like picking a friend up from the airport or helping them move house were just what friends did.
Now? Why ask for help when you can just book a service and avoid the feeling of “owing” someone?
Need a ride? Book a Grab. Need to move? Call Lalamove.
Everything has a price now, even favours.
So, instead of building connections, we avoid it — because why deal with the awkwardness of being “indebted” when it is easier to go solo?
As influencer Codie Sanchez succinctly puts it: Take an Uber, save a friendship.
These days, it is easier than ever to pay someone back — just key in their mobile number and send over the exact amount via PayNow.
However, when every kopi treat or dinner tab becomes a transaction, we lose what fosters intimacy in a friendship — that sense of mutual giving and receiving, of owing and being owed.
Friendship is built on doing things for each other.
It needs the courage to let someone help you, and the heart to help them without keeping score.
When we do something kind for a friend, it means something, not just because of the act, but because the person matters to us.
Once we start putting a price tag on every favour, we turn something meaningful into a transaction.
If friendship is just about splitting costs, then it becomes easy to replace — and that is not what a real connection should feel like.
Since the pandemic, self-work and productivity have become the new religion.
There is a “maxxing” for everything — facemaxxing, bodymaxxing, schedulemaxxing — and we have learned to optimise everything:
Source: vm on Canva, for illustration purposes only
However, a perfectly curated world does not have space for the messiness of real connections.
Friendships are awkward and unpredictable.
You can plan your 6am morning routine, but you cannot schedule an authentic connection.
In a world obsessed with structure and optimisation, there is no room for the messiness of unplanned fun.
Yet unstructured moments — random grocery runs, 2am gaming sessions, bad-mouthing exes till dawn — are the lifeblood of deep connection.
Real friendships thrive on unplanned, silly moments, and without that, we forget how to become friends.
In chasing optimisation, we have lost the art of simply being with others.
Source: Edwin Tan on Canva, for illustration purposes only
We have gotten so good at not needing anyone, all without ever having to owe anyone anything.
It is the Singaporean dream to be so self-reliant, we can carry our own groceries, solve our own problems, heal our own heartbreaks, and call our own cabs.
However, when we avoid the ask, the ride, the favour, the help, we also lose the chance to give, to show up, and to become the kind of friend we all wish we had.
Connection is not efficient, and it is rarely convenient.
Real friendship can be clumsy, unstructured, and slow — forged through shared silence, dumb jokes, and afternoons that stretch into nowhere.
When we trade all that away for self-sufficiency, we might find ourselves at the airport, suitcase in hand, wondering why the loneliness stings a little more than expected.
See also: MS Speaks: Stop calling that colleague your ‘work wife/ hubby’, it’s not cute
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Featured image adapted from capturenow on Canva and Ben Leung on Unsplash, both for illustration purposes only.