By the time you get to my age, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's.

A lot of people genuinely don't want to hang out with you. Likely that number exceeds the "real" Anna's by an order of magnitude.

If there's someone I particularly like, I'll keep inviting him. But if the person is otherwise normal (e.g. clearly has a social life), I invite 3-5 times, and then stop. If the guy wants to hang out with me, the ball's in his court.

You'll find no shortage of people who'll say "Hey man! What happened? I never hear from you any more!"

To which I'd love to respond with s/any more/ever/

If you're the guy who always invite people regardless of their response (or non-response), you'll find that people will have an expectation that you always invite them. I would recommend not getting to that point.

I'm in my 40s now, but when I was very young I had quite a rough time living in shared accommodation. It was people reaching out and asking me if I wanted to go out, whether or not I could, that in the same way stuck with me as helping to deal with being lonely. I still have the memory of peoples kindness and this story reminded me of those kindnesses. It's kind of a beautiful memory to have, even when the times were dark.

My interpretation is that Alexei might well have understood that Anna felt lonely / homesick. The reaching out could well have been simply sympathetic and well thought through to help include someone. That's what people did for me when I was young and out of my depth. Those people probably helped steer me into a good place when it could've gone bad.

It's always nice to reflect on the kindness of others. :)

It's a beautiful story, but honestly If Alexei really wanted to help Anna, he could've tried to ease her in their group, for example, by inviting her to a less stressful setting: a library, a friendly coffee date, etc.

Anna's behaviour indicates social anxiety grown into general avoidance (speaking from my own experience), and what's described in this story is the worst possible way to help a person with this condition. Alexei felt good about himself though, I suppose.

I'll add to this: it's usually not only OK, but appreciated when you're explicit about this.

I'm not a very social person by nature, and it has taken years -- decades, actually -- for me to get to the point where I feel comfortable in professional situations. One of the strategies I've developed to cope with this is to just be completely honest and upfront about my intentions.

This has backfired a couple of times when I started doing it, so I've since modified it to "wait until you're confident they're not shady". With that addition it has served me well.

I'm usually the Anna in the group, and always appreciate being remembered, even though it's not easy for me to say no.

This is also good advice if you're sensing people aren't as part of the group or team anymore, you...make them part of it again. Putting forth the effort (which may not be returned) of coordinating and including people is often the price of keeping a group together that you're leading or invested in.

Thanks for sharing this! It made my day a little brighter.

this reminds me of a friend who we've excluded from the group b/c of the age old advice of "the worst they can say is no". Well, we invited him to everything at first it was either no responses or late responses like "sorry was busy with work".

The whole friend group took their turns and attempts at inviting him.

It sort of stopped altogether when we started getting responses like "hey, don't call me without scheduling a call with me before" or getting a text 3 days later "hey what's up, I don't want to hang out".

He's a workaholic and believes his work is the most important thing (he switches jobs every 6-9 months) so the whole friend group has now just stopped trying.

For context, this has been going on for 10 years and about a year ago everyone stopped trying.

Thank you, a very heartwarming story indeed.

I think you just have coined a new saying - "Always invite Anna" sounds intriguing, and yet at the same time very descriptive.

Along a similar vein, I was working at a company. I was pretty much the gang leader for lunch.

One day a guy shows up at a desk. I dropped by and invited him to lunch, but thinking he’d say no. There was a considerable difference in our ages. But I thought I’d be polite and social.

He thought for a few seconds and said … sure.

He had the best stories. I have good stories. He had better. He’d been a dresser for Nureyev and traveled the world. He’d taught celestial navigation at RIT. He’d raced the Bermuda race and had a lifetime winning record against Buckley.

And he was dead three months later from the cancer he had that day. I can’t remember any of the lunch gang but I can remember him.

Was hoping that this was going to be about encouraging the use of shadow libraries.

The author of this should extend his LibGen browser to consult Anna’s Archive and z-lib:

https://github.com/Samin100/Alexandria

Sometimes they have some good reason (like a religious observance) and they don't want to spoil the mood with an awkward explanation.

Great story. Alexei is definitely a lucky man to be surrounded by good friends otherwise it’s too easy to be teased by your friends like your acting like some sort of philosopher or something.

This warmed my heart. Happy I read it.

Conversely, tend towards saying yes if someone you want to hang out with invites you out, as they usually ask once and never again.

Love the writing style

Happy you shared this, such a heartwarming story.

This is some of the best advice you'll ever get about building inclusive teams and making people feel like they can approach you about anything.

If you can approach them and get rejected each time, then surely they can approach you for advice on how to approach a problem.

That hero image I believe is from Lost in Translation

Which has an interesting scene the x-ray machines I think were flying overhead on these rails going between rooms

It's a great message, thanks for sharing.

Maybe she was just being polite, after several years.

"Friends" always invite us to their house. They have two large poorly behaved dogs, with no boundaries, and terrible hygiene. There is no way to explain, they love their dogs! So we always politely decline.

Also consider that maybe people do not want to party and the kind thing is not persistently inviting them, but rather actually find something to spend time with that person.

Not wanting to go out "to party" is not a moral failing, a problem, a fault, something which someone needs to overcome. If you like that person you can find something to do on a Friday night you both enjoy, if you don't then I doubt that you really care for that person at all.

We need more heroes of kindness.

This is a great thing to remember when you have friends with depression. I had serious medical issues for a year and a half of my life and experienced depression because of it. There were so many things I said no to that I otherwise wouldn't have. People stopped asking at times and it made me feel so much more isolated. It is very true that just asking someone can go a long way, even you you're 99.99% sure they'll say no.

Now that was an interesting read.

Why Anna, and not a thousand other people in the area? She must've done something to enter the group in the first place.