Today is the birthday of one of my friends. Actually, I don’t know if we are still friends. I have a special gift in befriending complicated people. Sometimes I have the feeling that I could be a perfect Mother Tereza II because I care and get involved in other people’s problems and try to be a shoulder for them to cry. People manage to go on, overcome the difficult situation, some even find happiness. Then of course most of them don’t need me anymore. Probably I should take it as an award, a sort of proof that my “coaching skills” are good and don’t care that I am, actually, left behind.
I remember my Geography teacher in secondary school. She was a bright young woman dedicated to making her subject interesting. Once we had a written test and half of the pupils cheated. She quickly realized the papers resembled each other, and even worse, they resembled the content of the lesson in the textbook. We had to draw some map while she was revising the tests. Suddenly, she stopped and said loudly in a sad voice: “I am so naïve. I really thought that pupils learn for tests. Half of you copied the lesson from the book. And you are only 12 years of age…”. At that time I didn’t know what the word “naïve” meant so I asked my mother explaining what happened at the test (I was not among those cheatingJ). My mother answered: “We will find out by yourself later”.
And I did, last year. I had a friend, that one, whose birthday is today. We are very different but I thought that was good because we can learn from each other. She is an introvert, I am a loud extrovert. She likes arts, I like football and the crowds on stadiums and sport halls. I became very attached to her. I thought I could fight for this friendship but I lost. In the end it turned out we were too different. Her wise conclusion is that in any kind of relation there is one who cares/loves/is involved more and that person is more vulnerable but such is life. Well, bad luck for me as it seemed I was the one investing more.
I remembered my Geography teacher. I sent her an email saying that I finally learned what “naïve” means, unfortunately. She replied that she herself learnt more about naivety meanwhile. “It depends how you choose to look at things, what referee point you choose. Don’t you remember what you’ve learned at Physics in school?”, she said. (Should I have told her that I was an expert in copying from my notebook during Physics test?)
I applied the principle anyway and I have reached the conclusion that there is a high chance that, in fact, the person who invests more is not more vulnerable because she or he knows how to make an investment while the one who doesn’t invest, has little chance to learn how to do it in the future.
So it seems I am wiser although I still feel a bitter taste in my mouth. You see, I simply can’t equal friends with mobile phones: when one breaks you can always replace it with another. I simply don’t believe that you can get some discounts (pausal) when it comes to friendship.
