Seeker


The difference between friendly and friend is something I have wrestled with my whole life. I am still trying to figure out balance between the two or more importantly the fine line that separates the two. Most people with a pulse can be friendly whether in person or via the internet. Both venues set up easy access in and possess pros and cons for uncomplicated exits. Some people both in person and online establish right away where things will go and how but most have a vail of obscurity around their intentions.

    Some will argue that making friends online maybe easier but it does set up some road blocks. Not to say that a face to face encounter doesn’t have its hurdles, a person can confuse and mislead and smokescreen just the same as someone online. Making friends, connections with people seems like a simple thing. You find people with the same likes and dislikes or mindset as you and either wait for them to reach out or you reach out and wait for some kind of response. A true connection will exhibit a natural ebb and flow to conversation, meaning you are not pulling words from their mouth to keep things afloat, it just naturally happens. You inquire things about them and they ask and discover things about you. The tricky part is understanding whether they were just being friendly to build a network or if they truly like you and want to stay connected and scratch beneath the surface.

     Because there are no rules in friendship or acquiring acquaintances you can’t paint someone in a corner and make them be your friend. Some people treat a bid for a friendship whether it’s next door or half way around the world as a foundation and some like its sport fishing where you catch and release. You would think that living in an electronic age would make communication with other people easier and there would no excuses but let’s face it for someone that has hundreds of friends via social media it’s impossible to keep open lines of steady communication with all of them. There will be a small handful out of those hundreds that that person will actually keep in touch with and everybody else on the list will be standby.

   It is still hard for me to differentiate between someone just being friendly building a network and someone who is definitely interested in who I am and wanting to be friends not just friendly. I suppose on a realistic level not on an idealistic mindset that simple indicators like whether the ask questions about you or respond back to a reach out or if they are able to spend some time with you and validate a need or as simple as initiate a conversation. Friendship should not be a complicated aspiration.

     I had to just recently figure out once again between friendship and acquaintance. I pretty much had a feeling where things were headed by what wasn’t being said or done. As I stirred the pot and observed I noticed silvers of truth coming to the surface. Now that this person who fore filled I guess in their mind an obligation that connected us in the beginning, I was thrown a bunch of nice words but haven’t seen or heard from this person since. My conclusion to what was irking me all along trying to figure this persons intentions is that it wasn’t friendship per say this individual was seeking but to network. It does suck when you think you made a connection with someone and you find out you were just a network buddy. I guess I don’t have a business mind after all; I still seek to connect and have interpersonal relationships/friendships.

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