New friends

Last week, I was on the phone to a friend and I found myself saying “When you get to a certain age, you just don’t want to open up anymore.” Before you judge, let me put this into context.

It was a conversation of about making new friends in life. Yes, we can all be nice and make friends. But are they really friends, if all you do is be nice around each other? If you genuinely want to make friends – not just find someone to spend lunch with at work, then you will need to open up and give something of yourself. That’s what youth is, children they are constantly open to the world – oh so much trust! Then somewhere along the way they learn to withdraw.

It is not that I am incapable of making new friends. People these days (not everyone, not just me either) we make the effort, we “open up”, then we hold back… on the rest. What I mean is even when we do open up; we still don’t open up. Playing a role, like an actor before camera lenses, we hide behind the façade.

Every now and then, we find ourselves in a position where we must open up. So we give a little not a lot to test the water till we feel safe.

Sometimes it just takes so much courage to simply live.

I recruit

I have been lying awake, thinking about friends and evaluating friendships. It feels like ‘a brain in a vat’ that reality is only made believe. Even the ones who I once considered to be the best of friends, somewhere down the track I have often came to a point and thought ‘Fail, fail, fail!’ I may have believed we would be friends forever, but it has never been too hard to take a step away. The worst part is I would rationally decide that I want to ‘cut’ the person out of my life completely, simply because they cannot meet my expectations.

Have I set the bar too high? After all, I am not looking for a partner in life. Having said that, is it too much to ask, to remember what I said when I have been ranting on about the same thing for over half an hour? Is it too much to ask, to be genuinely happy for me when I just saved myself from depression? Is it too much to ask, to void certain phrases that lifts the scars to my wound? Is it too much to ask, to sacrifice a little in the name of our friendship? Or is it too much to ask?

Is this what humanity is? 

We are all flawed in different ways. We are all strengthened in different areas. We all have different expectations. Do we accept each other for who we are, or do we move on to the next lot of applicants?

For the best