the zurkie show - a plant taught me how to be a friend

Episode Date: April 26, 2026

don't limit yourself to one plant.you're allowed to grow with other people you like more.thanks for stopping by my garden :)sending you all lots of love and peaaaaaaaace!https://linktr.ee/thezurkieshow

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My mom used to take a lot of pride in being a corporate woman. Being a lady who would do an 11-hour day, commute for two hours, work for eight, maybe see a co-worker for an hour. And that was her personality for a lot of my childhood. I knew my mom as someone who was hard work. working, an absolute corporate goat, climbing the ladder to build a better life for me and my family. Now, that isn't to say I don't respect my dad. My dad was not a corporate worker, but he was a very hard worker.

And I learned a lot of very interesting characteristics from both of my parents. But what I also learned was how disposable they were in modern society. It took my mom coming home one day after I had school and I was waiting for her and telling me, I just got let go from my job and we're going to have to make some changes around the house to realize that her 12 years of grinding, of going after something, resulted in just a decision that was made on a spreadsheet by the higher-ups. Whoopty-hoo, Christmas was going to look a little bit different this year. no Legos under the table, under the table, under the Christmas tree. I digress. I have also kind of learned a similar thing about people at large relationships. And that is a lot of us strive to build relationships, connections, what have you, with people that do not care about us.

not in a similar sense at all, not in a, you know, reciprocal sense. It's transactional. And in the epidemic of loneliness amongst Gen Z, it's funny. I think part of the problem is nobody has real friendships. What is a real friendship? Where do we draw the line and build a true friendship? It's something I've been trying to figure out in my life. I have a lot of friends.

Well, actually, I'd scratch that. of acquaintances. You probably have a lot of people that you know in your community. A lot of people that, you know, you'll say hi too. If you see them on the bus or you see them at school or you see them at work. But you'd never put in an effort to hang out with them. It's kind of out of your character and you know this. And funny enough, this used to be out of my character too. I'm propagating this pathos. And I used to look at plants and think, what a waste of space. You could put a cool Takashi Murakami-style rug in this corner. Instead, you have a pathos. Loser! And then I realized plants are the coolest thing nature has to offer. It's unbelievable. It's like a symbol for

growth and what real growth looks like. That was weird. Anyways, let's keep it moving. I feel like there's a lot of weird there's a lot of weird dynamics in friendship maybe it's an American thing I don't think so I think it's turning into a world thing where people will want to be your friend if it is advantageous to them

if you have some kind of resource something you can provide them if you are a good soundboard to their problems And that's kind of like a, like, Zirk, that's really, really bad to think about things that way. But maybe it's the fact that I have felt in the past that I've been used quite a bit by other people. And I'm sure that you can think of a list of people who have used you in some kind of way, have made you feel like, bro, is there anyone out there for me? By the way, look at this leaf.

This is crazy. It's like an upside-down pathos. It could be like a helicopter. I identify literally as Apothos helicopter. Crazy joke that people were making back in the day. I'm sure you had a couple dank memers in your grade that kept identifying as attack helicopters. Anyways.

Just sometimes it feels like people want to be your friend for a selfish reason. Not because they're interested in you. It's because they fear that maybe them spending too much time alone would result in them exploding, their mind just like not knowing where to go. And I try to entertain relationships as much as I can. Like I try to really befriend people and get to know people, but I do find that I am kind of reclusive sometimes in the people that I choose to give my energy to. And I'm not going to. And I'm not going to

be, you know, I'm going to be honest. I'm not going to be hypocritical and say, I don't do this. Sometimes it does really come down to, can someone make you laugh? Can someone make you cry? Can somebody actually ask questions about your life that make you feel like, wow, this person cares? And they're showing that they care. And I really appreciate that. but oftentimes I've caught myself in situations where I get so hyped up to be a friend, so hyped up to meet somebody new, and I'm like, oh my God, they have similar interests,

they have similar ideas of the world, we're going to be best friends. And it just doesn't click. It just doesn't feel like there is that thing that I'm looking for. And I think that friendship, good friendship is a challenge. It's a challenge that you're willing to work at. It's a challenge that you are willing to kind of stake out for.

If you think in your life, the people that you've come across so far, that's the best it gets, you're really limiting yourself to the kinds of relationships and friendships you can make down the line. And this is something people box themselves in on all of the time. They think that there's only one group of friends that is truly their group of friends. They think that there's one kind of person that truly understands them. When in reality, this world is so vast, it's so big.

There's so many different kinds of people. I know they like to tell you that there's just NPCs everywhere, but it's not true. There's a lot of really unique perspectives. It's just that you'd probably have to get a little bit uncomfortable befriending them. Also, I'm struggling to think how to cut these leaves here because I want there to be enough of this node open so that the stem can propagate and grow roots from it. So I'm going to make these clippings a little bit longer. Let's see what happens.

This is kind of what it looks like. So the propagated clippings of the pathos are going to sit in this water. And then within the span of like two months, people like to say, it only takes a month. It takes closer to two. roots will actually grow from the side of these clippings here, or they'll grow from this middle node right here, and you will have a whole other plant. I've literally replanted this pathos in multiple different locations. And similarly, this pathos also reminds me a lot of what I think people should do if they want to build true friendships. You have to speak. You have to

spread out. Stop investing in just one person thinking that that person won't change. That's your best friend. That's your bestie. It is good to have multiple clippings because you never know what something will grow into. And it might not be a friendship. It could be a relationship. You two could really be into each other for a whole different reason. And that's a really beautiful thing. How many people back in the day used to meet their wife or their husband or their partner from just being homies or being in the same kind of group of friends and then you start talking and you're like, wait a minute, I love this person. It happened a lot. Happens a lot less now because we've kind of divvied up the two. We no longer play matchmaker for our friends. Kind of is a little bit weird.

It's like, I don't know. No, I don't want to do that. You know, you got to figure it out. Go on the apps and take care of yourself. But there is something to be said about, like help a brother out, man. Help them out. Get them a date. Your friend that's kind of antisocial. Set him up on a blind date.

You know, why not? Man, this vine is so long. They really said do it for the vine and they did it. But when you plant yourself in other people's lives and you have this desire to keep some kind of relationship, make something happen for long term, right? Like, we're going to be friends. I want this person in my wedding, whatever.

I think that assumptions of how a friendship will look like destroys any possibility of it growing into its own thing and growing its own vine. You know, pathos, you can leave them in water. They'll grow, kind of, but it's always good to plant them in soil, water, water them over. time and kind of wait and see where it goes. What I found a lot of people do is they meet somebody that has maybe similar vibes to them or they're in some kind of organization together or maybe their work friends. And immediately, a lot of their personality is staked in the idea that they are friends with this person or that this person is their best friend. And lo and behold,

when a year goes by because you're 18, 19, 20 years old and you're 18, 20 years old and you're, change every year almost into a completely new person, suddenly you're no longer friends with this person and it feels like you've done some kind of sabotage or you are just like a weirdo because you no longer like them. When in reality, maybe your friendship took some maturing. Maybe when you two were really young, you just didn't have the foundation. That person didn't go through certain experiences with certain people to make them realize why a friendship with you was important. And similarly, you might have just found them weird. You might have not been really mature enough to judge their character. And instead of you're like, I'm not going to be

friends of this person. This dude's a weirdo. Like, I don't care, you know. It's happened to all of us. It's funny. Maybe we should stop judging people so quick when we meet them. Maybe a better thing to do is realize that everyone has some kind of fault. Nobody is going to be a perfect match for you. It's actually a very beautiful thing. And if you can appreciate somebody for their faults and understand where they're coming from, actually makes you understand yourself a little bit more

and be a little bit graceful. I mean, one of the biggest problems for me was I was so hard, on myself that I would almost make the decision for other people that, oh, that they would never want to befriend me because I am so terrible to myself. So how can that, how can I have some kind of good relationship towards somebody else? But in reality, dude, it's like, people see the good in you more than they see your bad. Like, you are wearing the lenses of your inner critic of the worst parts of you. You see them every single day. And usually you hyper focus on them if you're like me. It's like there's no escape. It's just, oh my God, I did this bad. I did this

bad. And other people, you'd be surprised, are pretty graceful. I'll give you an example. My girlfriend and I were going to a dinner party that my friend was hosting. And I got super frustrated. Not just in my, you know, it wasn't towards my girlfriend. It was more towards me because we were late. We were late for this dinner party. And we were substantially late. It wasn't like we were 15 minutes late. We were like two hours late. And I thankfully conveyed my frustration in a way that wasn't like just screaming and being like, why are we late? It was more of, I kind of told my girlfriend. I'm like, hey, I want to voice something. I'm really frustrated because like I feel like being being late is what a loser does. Like losers

are late. And I was always judged on my lack of time management as a kid. I was so bad. And I still, it's not my strong suit. Time management is the bane of my existence as a human being. It's just like I don't know where the time goes, except I completely do. It is the in-betweens. something will only take me an hour and a half, but it is the sitting kind of on my phone in between starting the hour and a half endeavor that I just poop the time away. I poop the time away.

It's gone, down the toilet. It's done. And I've learned now that I'm procrastinating jumping into the water and like attempting whatever I'm doing. Like actually being like, okay, here we go, right? I'm going to go into the supermarket. I'm going to get my groceries.

And I'm like kind of sitting in this limbo because I love this limbo of like, oh, I'm about to do it. I know I'm about to do it. But just like five more minutes. It's kind of like before you wake up for school when you were younger, you're kind of thinking about how the day is going to look. And, you know, maybe there's a test or something that you got coming up. And there's something you don't want to do, but you know you have to do it. You'll kind of, you know, stay in bed a little bit longer, dreading the inevitable. when in reality it's not that bad.

You take the test and you're like, either you've failed it completely and you're screwed, or you take it and you're like, wait a minute, this was actually pretty easy. I don't know why I made this such a big deal. It's not that big of a deal. So the same thing will happen with me with time, and, you know, I was criticized a lot growing up for it.

Rightfully so, maybe, but the way in which I think I was criticized was more of this represents your character instead of like, hey, this just, you're not good at time management. So you've got to fix this. And so I started to become very guilty or feel very guilty with time management, with my lack of organization. I thought of myself as less than people who were just always,

they were never procrastinating anything in their life. I don't know how they did it. I befriended many of those people. I still don't understand how they do it, but they do. And funny enough, I've actually realized that my procrastination of doing things and waiting until the last minute was actually an insane strength for me. And it enabled me to make ideas come to life, whether it was writing an essay about, you know, a narrative piece for my literature writing class, whatever. It was a superpower. I could sit down in the last hour and a half and crank out something that would save my entire grade.

And I used to be shamed about that. And then I was like, wait a minute, I can do this and not a lot of people can. I still get the work done. Maybe I need to put myself in more positions where I have to come up with things on the fly, come up with things very quickly. And I learned I was actually pretty good at conversation talking to people. You don't have any time to study talking to people, especially when you're out and about, right? If you're in New York City walking down the street, you're going to study about the guy that's holding a camera? No, you go up to him.

You ask them, what are you shooting on? Oh, you shoot film. That's super cool. You know, where can I find your photography? Oh, you want to do a portrait of me? Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. Let's do it, right?

That is a skill. And maybe my time management isn't the best thing in the world, but maybe that's not where my skill lies. Anyways, all of this came out of friendship, right? In a similar sense, maybe you aren't meant to have cookie cutter friends. If your friends don't excite you, you call them, same old, same old, while you're changing your life every day, it's okay to have the thought that this is no longer my tribe. we as human beings outgrow people a lot we outgrow our you know natural hometown our home vine right and we need a new challenge we need more people to make us feel like we're challenged again

like we're expanding like we're learning because bro i mean in this world where there is already so so much just unknown and so much rides on you know I don't even know anymore. Nobody can do. Nobody knows anymore. It's good to at least control something like your development of yourself. I was on the phone with one of my friends today. And he was talking about how like he really wants to move somewhere.

He really wants to go somewhere. And I know, you know, life is expensive. Dude, I get it. And we're having this conversation and just the way in which he was, was speaking about the things he really wanted to do, which was like move to another state, work his same job, maybe find a better job, and not feel like he was stuck in the rat race, as he called it. It just wasn't convincing. I knew he wasn't going to do it. And that's really frustrating because you will find that there are some people that would rather stay on

the vine, stay complaining, stay in the same place of their life. life, then to cut a piece off, plant it somewhere else, and wait a little bit to see something grow. And this happens time and time again. And that's why for you, it is so important that you invest your time amongst a bunch of different seeds. Your time is so valuable. And I'm not saying that you need to befriend everybody. But it is good to have friends that are, are doing exciting things. And this isn't even like on some business stuff. It's just like think about your own possibilities.

There's a good chance if somebody is cool, they can teach you a lot. They're doing something unique. They have some kind of skill set. They have a very different perspective than you do at home and the way in which you grew up. They can teach you a lot. They can expose you to new environments. Who knows, right? Maybe in the future they take up a job or a university study in another country.

and you can go and visit them. And that is something that is enriching to you. People, I don't think, enrich themselves in friendships. They think that friendships are kind of just a given. It's a fixed mindset of, you know what, I grew up around these people. It doesn't mean these people define you, though. It doesn't mean that these people are the ones that you continuously need to keep a contact with.

And as we get older and our time becomes more and more scarce, it becomes imperative that you have good friends that aren't going to waste your time with BS, with complaining, with being like, oh, it is what it is. You will need support as you get older. And it's nice to have somebody on the phone calling from another place asking you, how are you? How are you doing? And they're not asking it, you know, to sell you a MLM opportunity, right? Some Kukko knives. They are asking you because they're genuinely curious. They're like, dude, what's been going on? I know you're doing your thing. I'm doing my thing too. Like, we should meet up. We should hang out. And not every friend of yours is going to be, I don't know, a business mogul or something crazy. They always talk about

you're the average of the five friends that you spend the most time with. And it creates this sometimes toxic mindset of, I need to just be surrounded by goats, people who are, you know, sales to sales, absolute degenerates. not degenerates, but like, they're making a bunch of money, whatever. I need to be with the girl bosses. I need to be with these corporate people. It's also important you grow in your own ways. Propagating this plant is not making me any money.

Heck, it's probably a waste of time if I were to look at it from a corporate drone perspective. It absolutely is. But I enjoy it. I like to do it. I love watching these plants go and do their own thing. And I am like an overlord taking care of them. It's kind of very narcissistic like I'm playing an overlord. No, but it's cool to know that my care can take something and turn it into something else.

Like I have some kind of direct control over that. And there are so many things, you know, in our lives. that are just not in our control. But how you spend your time, what you put your energy and your life source into, and who you surround yourself with, who you decide to entertain conversations with, who you date,

these are all things we do control. To a degree, there's also, you know, the reality, some of us are born in places where the mindset is a little bit different, right? You need to walk in, you need to become a doctor, an entrepreneur, or you're nothing.

And it becomes this pressure cooker. it becomes harder to do anything. And I definitely don't think that you should discount the pressure. I mean, that's, you know, you're in your own world there. My perspective is different from what you're experiencing, but also, I do think that just because you can't see it yet

doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'll say that again. Just because you can't see it yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I used to be under the impression when I lived, you know, in Palatine, Illinois, beautiful Palatine, Illinois, where things are happening. I used to think that my trajectory, like my life, was going to follow that of my parents. I was going to finish high school, go to college to have the time of my life, the best four years of my life. And then I was going to retire that, get a job, live near the train station, commute into the city,

mute back and then play maybe soccer on the weekends and go drinking. It's all I saw. That's all I saw. Everything was the same. And okay, you know, compared to people who are, you know, worrying about their next meal. I guess that's a good life. It is. It's, you can't complain.

But I just, I just didn't want to do that. I just, I said, not me. And this isn't even to sell. you anything, like maybe that's what you do want. That's awesome. You need to pursue that. Tenfold. I just couldn't do it. And online I was seeing, I was seeing people that were pursuing creative endeavors, art, business, architecture, all of these different things, design. And they were living a life in which they were traveling, working with people all over the world, where they were streaming live, where they were making music. And I looked at that and I was like, that is so cool.

amazing would it be to do that and maybe there's something that you are feeling called to but your current circle just doesn't they don't even know how to react to you being like yo I think I want to study like biology and work in a lab on diseases they're like dude you're in the middle of Oklahoma like get back on the tractor and mow some hay just because you can't see it and you your environment doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Those two, it's weird because this contributes to also so much of our perspective on friendships, we see what we have in front of us and we think that is, that's what we get.

That's what we deserve. Relationship, same thing. Well, this is the best I have. And if you don't feel enriched by it, if you don't feel like this is really building me into the person that I want to be, why are you wasting your time? Like your time would be better spent trying to pursue those relationships.

And a good way that you do that in terms of friendships is you got to grow the plant first. You've got to have some vines to give up. And sometimes you won't even have these vines. You'll only have one little sapling here. This is going to be you, right? And so you are wanting to give. give up this piece of you, this time, this like idea of who you want to be, and you just

don't have enough of it yet. Sometimes in order to attract the people that you want into your life, you need, you need evidence. You do. You need evidence that like you, for example, you want to be taken seriously as a carpet weaver or a carpet tuftor or whatever, but you've never made a carpet, right? the chances of somebody mentoring you or telling you, hey, this is how you make a carpet. Or let's go with cutting hair. I think this is a good example.

Like the chances of somebody mentoring you how to cut hair when you're not trying or you're not doing stuff on mannequins or running your own fate or whatever, it's pretty slim. It's pretty slim because you have no example of it. In a similar sense, like if you want to be taken seriously as whatever, a writer, an artist, a comedian, whatever profession, if you're not doing stuff to like be seen as that person, it ain't going to happen.

It's just not how it works. And I had to learn this very quickly that the way, people talk about like looks mattering, right? I don't think looks matter as much as the way in which you are perceived how you want to matters. and in my opinion, you know, I try to be perceived as the person that I feel I am. So I try to stay consistent with my values. It's hard. It's very difficult. But I also, like, I just try to be myself, which is funny because I've even struggled

without it being like, how much of myself should I show people? Because what if they don't like it? No one's ever going to like you 100%. Right? But in order to make the friends that you want, it's probably a matter of being seen the way that you want. What kind of friends do you even want? Because after you get out of high school, it's no longer about popularity. Who knows who knows who, who's whose daughter.

Like, you know, yes, there is the whole nepotism sphere of the world. But a lot of it comes down to, like, who's a good person? Who's somebody doing something fun? Who's someone that could invite you to something and spend time with you and be interested in you? I guess the moral of this conversation, it's kind of a reminder that like you've got to take agency over the people that are in your life because you actually have a lot more to give than you think. You know, this one vine is going to produce me, I don't even know.

like one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight different mini plants. I'm probably going to cup a couple of them together. Let's say, you know, three each, I'm twenty-eight, uh, it's like almost, almost, give or take, 10 different plants. Almost. It's pretty cool.

Out of one big boy here, out of one pathos, which check this out. If you lift up the pathos sitting in water, it's got this root system underneath it. It's so cool. I cannot believe it just does that. They exist.

You haven't found them yet, but they definitely exist. They're definitely here. The friends that you want, the people that you want, the people that aren't going to laugh at your ideas or think that like a group chat visit to Argentina is not possible or that you know the the ones that are going to follow your impulses to do cool stuff and to try things you know guys we're entering a phase I think of the world

where you're going to have to risk it you're going to have to risk it the idea of playing things safe is one of the past because there's no benefit for it. You're going to play it safe. You're going to get a safe job that will eventually a robot could do. I don't think so. You're going to have to risk it. And it might not be with your work. It might not be with your degree. That's fine. I accept that. At the very least, have it be with the people you're around. Have it be so you're informed, not just by what you see, but by people, by perspectives. So you understand where information is flowing and how it goes through you. It's kind of, you know, I know, oh, that's zirk, that sounds so woo-woo.

Trust me, when I started to surround myself with people that are kind of in individual pockets of the world and are the internet, my worldview has changed. My understanding kind of how the world works has changed a lot. it's just very nice and refreshing to be around people that are as interested, as curious, as, like, tuned in to the things that matter to you and them, right? And they're actively going out and seeking out information and friendships and making things happen. That is going to appreciate so much in your life. It has for me. So if you want to take Unk as an example, do it.

and what else can I tell you, man, do not sweat friendships that aren't working out. They're not meant to be. Simple as that. And if it's meant to work out, it'll come back around when the time is right. Right now, my just, you know, relationships are timing. Right now it might not be the time. That's totally okay. Listen, if you like today's episode, let me know.

I'm kind of attacking it from a little bit of a different angle. I'm glad that you could join me here in my garden, which isn't much of a garden. It's a, you know, a table. But you know what? I'm going to reframe that because I'm talking down on something that I've been practicing for over a year now. I love plants.

I love gardening. I love using my green thumb. It's just nature is the best content. It really is. Because it's a slow burn. It's like a slow movie. You know, like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino.

It's slow and you might fall asleep during the best part of the movie, which I did when it came out. Full transparency. Haven't watched it again. I might have to do that. And it's just very, very neat to see how your plants grow over time, how they change. What they need, what they don't need. I really want to grow a pineapple. That's on my list.

I actually just bought one at the grocery store. And I want to, you know, attempt to make one. I'm also going to have to make sure all the roots are submerged here. We'll figure it out. But anyways, you guys already know the deal. If you're trying something new, just know that I believe in you. And I'm doing this in reverse. Do the things that bring you joy.

Again, rewind, if you're trying something new. Just know that I believe in you. And Zerki Show, as always, don't stress yourself out too much. Go for a walk. Take a little break. I'm sending you lots of love. Peace!