I suddenly have the urge to write down some of my most complex thoughts now that I am unemployed and am having countless meet-ups with pals and friends that I have known over the course of the last 20 odd years.
One thing I realise about my choice of friends has always been a foe's friend is a foe. I usually do not enjoy being friends with people whom I disagree with the way they do things, not on a rash assessment but over a certain period of time of observing them, because I dislike having disagreements while hanging out with them. Consequently, I will also distant myself from people whom they hang out with. This is because I hate the awkward moment when we talk about the person who I have a different evaluation of. However, I have been keeping in contact with two of such people who happen to be friends with those people I crossed out as potential friends long ago. When they ask me about our mutual friends, the socially appropriate "me" will say neutral things about such people because I really dislike badmouthing others simply because my personal judgment and opinion of one do not constitute a good evaluation of a person after all. Everyone is entitled to their own personal opinions. However, I am someone who is frank to people whom I view as friends to keep for life.
For one of them, I met up with him lately and sometimes I forget about the fact that he is on very personal and close terms with these other people who I do not wish to be acquainted with. He is someone who is easy going and easy to talk to and I enjoy meeting up with him over coffee. The things that we talk about usually stretch beyond the daily grouses of life but more about things that we enjoy doing, travelling, world affairs, etc. Of course we do keep each other updated about our lives as well and he does share interesting things about his work with me and vice versa. However, every now and then, I am reminded of his friendship with all these other people and I feel that I should distant myself from him just to avoid that conflict in interest. Coupled with the fact that he is someone who is very easy to talk to, people converse with him a lot and of course he knows a lot of insider news and I am always wary of such people. Information has to be traded because when someone tells you a secret or some ground breaking news, it is inevitable that you will also tell him or her whatever you know. For me, I hate conversations like these whereby you need to trade information because put it in a crude way, you are simply gossiping. So I always choose to receive and simply nod in agreement. I always feel that if he is ever so willing to share information with me, it must also mean that he will be ever so willing to share information about me with others and honestly, I don't really enjoy that. Thus, from time to time, I will re-evaluate my friendship with him. Even now as I am typing this post, I am thinking about how I should be handling this friendship moving forward. We are planning a travel adventure soon and it is not that I am having second thoughts about it but will all the social media updates that he make complicate our friendship? I really don't know. I always believe that 作朋友讲缘分, too many people walk in and out of my daily life but only true friends leave their footprints. It may be cliche to say but it is so damn true! I rather have 10 close friends whom I remember their phone numbers by heart than to have a 100 unfamiliar numbers whom I will think twice about calling in my contact list. This is also the reason why people like CDGJ, BenC, Linken, etc. are so damn important to me.
In conclusion, I think sometimes this is perhaps the reason why your best friends and confidants are people whom you know in your teenage years. Things were so much simpler back in the younger days. You gossip but things you say do less damage than they do when you say it as a mature adult. Why must things get so complicated when you grow up? Or maybe I am the one who is complicated. This is also one of the many reasons why I want to run away all the time, to run away from all these complexities, hide myself from the world and start afresh elsewhere where no one knows me and I do not have to deal with all these shit of who's a friend of a foe or who's a foe or who's a friend's friend, etc., whom I should trust, whom I should not, etc. But that say, I love my family members a lot for they have been my pillar of support for the large part of my life thus far --> Stay tune for the next post: My lovely siblings!
