iThink...thereFore, iAm

It’s snowing outside in London, and I just had a great dinner with god-family and friends! I was contemplating on a cider but given the amount of food i just ingested and the temperature i thought a warm cup of Horlicks would do a better deal :)

=========

Recent events have brought up thoughts of what friends should be like, and what their loyalties should be. More so, it brought up not-so-recent events and past history (or histories) of betrayal.

I used to believe that “if you mess with my friends you mess with me” - I still do, but i say i “used to” because i realize that not everyone believes in that. Sometimes people think “what you do to my friends is not necessarily on me”. Sometimes people think other things as well, and hey I’m not one to judge. But by and large, i’d like to think that most of us have the mentality of the first one, that if someone messes with your friends it would effectively be messing with you.

I don’t know when it was or what it was, but somewhere along my unlucky life of inter-person relations, it somehow got diluted. I began to think it was ok if my friends didn’t stand up for me. I started to let people treat me like I wasn’t someone important, and i believed i wasn’t anyone important. Or maybe i didn’t bother how people were treating me anyway coz i was happy leading the life i was in. Or maybe i was already having too small of a social circle to be comfortable about and i was willing to lower my standards.

Whatever the case, what i didn’t realize was that these people were the ones that were constantly putting me on a roller coaster - they’d be my friends one moment, and i’d have no idea where i stood the next. Or they’d be saying something supportive and then suddenly their actions make me unsure of which side they’re on. And i don’t profess to always be on the right side - i’m wrong sometimes (or most of the time, depending on which side you’re on) too, and i’m not above apologising for behaviour.

This was a few days back and i’ve had the gift of QT pointing things out to me and i’m thankful. But the few days has not only given me time to think about this post, it’s also given me time to think about the people who have really treated me as friends and not just bail out on me as and when they wish. As i said, somewhere along the lines, i lost that demand for loyalty and strong friendships. I’ve had to fish through the people who kept me around because they cared for me (maybe some less than others - therearedifferent degrees of friends after all), the people who kept me around for their benefit, the people who just found it convenient, and the people who would go out of their way for me. I’ve had to have a serious think about it, and right now as i type this post, I wonder which of these people will really be my friend and stand the test of loyalty.

Because if i’m going to bring myself up to the level of “if you mess with my friends you mess with me”, then i want people who would do the same for me.