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Help Your Friends Move
How altruistic actions can foster community in uncertain times
Unless you’re rich and can pay someone else to do it, moving sucks. Some may argue it’s one of the top ten worst human experiences. Because it’s never just moving.
It’s packing, it’s cleaning, it’s organizing, it’s reorganizing, it’s the actual heavy lifting, it’s the first day in your new place where there are wall-to-wall boxes, and you’re on an air mattress.
It’s the exhaustion that comes during and later, the room you forgot about, the disbelief at just how many things you own. It’s a multi-day affair and so much worse if you have to do it alone. There comes the question: do you hire movers, or ask your friends?
As a kid, I feel like I remember watching movies and TV with classic moving scenes. We wouldn’t have gotten “Pivot!” from Friends if Ross hadn’t asked his friends to help move his new couch.
But it seems like culture is changing. A few months ago, this went viral of a man in his late 20s asking several of his friends to help him move. Every single one of them said no. I was shocked. It was the same feeling I had when an old roommate suggested his friend take an Uber from the airport instead of picking him up.
