Disclaimer: I had a little bit of Knob Creek Bourbon, therefore my thoughts might come out unfiltered.
So, I thought that friendship is what we, human beings, should be able to appreciate and preserve.
I went with my thoughts back in time, when we were young and friendship meant having fun, being together and sharing thoughts just about everything.
Now we are not so young anymore and the whole concept of friendship seems to have been changed.
I am still on the fence if I like this change or not.
We have virtual and real friends. In some cases we reached out and reconnected with old friends or colleagues thinking that we still have some of the past magic in common; in other cases we have been approached by people asking us to accept their virtual friendship because they liked the way we think or because they needed another number to add to their 500+ list of ‘friends’.
Either way, we might be set to be disappointed. Maybe we moved on, we changed, we are not the same people we were 30-40 years ago. Maybe the ‘new’ people we became are not ‘acceptable’ anymore. Maybe they changed.
Regardless of all of this, there is a part of us still nostalgic about the past; there is another part of us ready to make new friends, new connections, with people which met the ‘new’ us and liked what they saw.
Take for example Facebook and what kind of information people post in there; almost everybody is trying to be politically correct, or so I like to think, because the opposite of it would be plain stupidity. Sure, it’s wonderful to have a bleeding heart and think about all the poor people out there, especially if everything stays at the rhetoric/theoretical level and you are not exposed to any direct contact with these poor souls; here in Canada it is called the ‘Not in my backyard’ syndrome.
Recently I found it difficult to express my true feelings and thoughts because I did not want to offend anybody, and eventually I realized that if I have to filter my thoughts and feelings it means that I am not in the right environment or with the right people.
What is the purpose of being there (Facebook or any other virtual reality social platform) if I can’t be the true me? I don’t have a website or home based business to promote. I have just a blog most people don’t even know about as it was meant to be a time capsule for me mostly.
Is it enough for me to share videos with cute kittens or inspirational quotes?
Not really; therefore I have two options: stay on FB and stop complaining, or be the way I am and see how many people are still going to stick around. If they are easily offended by me talking or making fun of proselytism, or if I have different opinions on politics and they get upset to the point of deleting me from their friends list, so be it. At least I will know at some point that whoever is still around had enough intelligence to see the real me.
Now, let’s move on to the real life situations. They are sometimes even trickier, because you put on the rose coloured glasses and look through them to see just rainbows and unicorns.
Some people are ‘friends’ with you because you happen to address some needs of the moment; but because you are wearing the rose coloured glasses, you think that you are appreciated for who you are, not for the purpose you serve; and naturally when the need disappears, so does the ‘friendship’. Young or old, virtual or real life, you suffer the same because you invested time and emotions in that relationship.
You have to put things in perspective: life could be too short and you may expire at any moment. You have to ask yourself if it is worth it to put up with all the bullshit?
I decided that it is not. Once the bullshit is detected, nip it in the bud. Don’t let things escalate to the point of no return because it’s only going to make it more difficult and more painful to sever ties.
Be realist, admit your mistake and downgrade the former ‘friends’ to the ‘acquaintance’ category where they belonged from the very beginning.
Now you know what you are ready to accept or not from them and they are not going to hurt you anymore.
If you are there just to be the receiving end of the unceasing bragging about their success and money, they are not your friends, they are only blabbing shallow beings you should not call friends anyway.
It’s time to heal your wounds and move on knowing that friendship is a two way street, it is a relationship of giving and receiving, it is about having trust in somebody and being there when you are needed, as well as having the other party being there when you are in need.
In conclusion, put your shit together and tell them to fuck off. You are better of without them anyway.