Not because either of you is rude. You've had good conversations. You'd be glad to see them. But each time was a first time, and a first time leaves almost nothing behind, so the next time you start again from nothing. Hello. I'm. Sorry, remind me.

We treat the first meeting as the event. The party, the opening, the introduction, the app that exists entirely to manufacture them. First meetings are easy. We've built an enormous amount of machinery to produce more of them, and almost none to do the thing that actually matters, which is the fifth time.

Because the fifth time is where it happens. Not the first, where everyone is performing a slightly better version of themselves, but the fifth, where the performance has worn off and there's a shorthand, and someone remembers the thing you said last time and asks how it went. That's the moment a stranger becomes a person you know. It is almost never the result of one remarkable encounter. It is the result of return.

The strange thing about adult life is how little of it returns. You meet constantly and repeat almost no one. The calendar fills with new, and the new feels like progress, more people, more rooms, a fuller life. But a life made of first meetings is a life of permanent introductions, and you can feel rich in people and still not be known by any of them.

We are good at meeting and bad at coming back. The whole problem is the coming back.