What Do We Consider Real Enough to Show Up For?

A lot of human life runs on social expectation.

We go to weddings because we are invited. We stay longer than we want to at dinners because it would feel rude to leave. We show up to things not because they are alive for us, but because of social expectation.

Over time, it starts to blur what we are actually doing with our time.

Weddings make this very visible.

I was invited to S’s wedding 5 years back. We had been close in school, but that kind of closeness did not survive the transition into adult life. After we left that shared structure, the connection dissolved.

When I realised I had booked a trip to Bali that clashed with her wedding, she wanted me to cancel my plans. I looked into cancelling like I promised. Flights, refunds, logistics.

But the real question wasn’t practical.

It was: what am I actually participating in here?

The relationship no longer had much life in it, even if the invitation still existed. My attendance would have been socially correct, but emotionally empty. So, I didn’t go.

She was upset, and I was honest. I don’t regret it. I simply did not step into a story that didn’t feel like mine.

Since then, I’ve become more aware of how often we operate in this mode — doing things because they are expected, not because they are meaningful. Weddings are just one version of it. Work events, dinners, even relationships can drift into this space where the structure remains, but the presence inside it is gone.

We see it elsewhere too, more subtly.

Couples sitting together but scrolling separately. Holding hands in public, but not really meeting each other’s attention in private. The shape of connection is there, but the substance is somewhere else.

It makes me think about where energy actually goes.

Because time and attention are not infinite, and when they are spent on maintaining forms that no longer hold meaning, something else gets neglected.

I’ve never been convinced by the idea that large parts of life should be consumed by ritual, performance, and social maintenance when that same time and energy could be used to build something real — something that compounds, generates value, creates independence, changes the material shape of your life.

A typical wedding in Singapore is one day of consumption funded by saving for years or going into debt for it. The money could have been put to starting a business, even a small one, and used to generate years of output. It can create freedom, options, and stability that extend far beyond a single moment of celebration.

So when I choose where to place my time, I’m not only thinking about whether something is socially expected. I’m thinking about whether it is real, whether it is alive, and whether it builds anything that lasts beyond the moment.

Tonight, I’m attending E’s wedding.

We are very different people. She is someone who plans carefully, who treats commitments seriously, who invests meaning into milestones like this in a way I don’t naturally relate to. When we first met, she was direct in a way that was almost disarming. Though we were new to each other (and at work), as my 19 year old intern, she made me promise that I would invite her to my own wedding someday. It was oddly specific, but she meant it.

Over the years with her, there is no gap between form and intent. She means what she says. She shows up consistently, not just when it is convenient or visible.

Ultimately, presence is simply a response to something that is still real between two people.

In a world full of polite appearances, it is rarer than it seems.

So tonight, we celebrate E and her new season of life.