Monday, January 14, 2008

Silver and Gold

After a long hiatus of work and living life I have decided to start writing again. I was pleasantly surprised and somewhat amazed at some of the feedback I received from people on the few entries left standing on this site during the past 2 years of inactivity. I just hope that my perspective on life hasn’t changed so much in two years to negatively affect your experience reading this blog. In any case it will be interesting to see what comes out of this. Please read away and enjoy.
Silver and Gold
If you are like me you like to meet new people. It is one of my favorite things to do in this world. However, it is not always easy. I think I am a very personable guy but sometimes I find it hard to build up the courage to say hi to someone new. I think the key is to follow the old Nike slogan and “just do it.” Whether you are trying to pick up a potential new romance or trying to meet a new friend the worst that can happen is that they could say no or snub you in some way. And if this ever happens, well then, it is pretty obvious that that is not the sort of person you would want to be around anyway.
Growing up I always felt that I was a very shy child. I don’t think I made friends very easy and it took me a long time to learn how to make friends. I think I was in my 20’s before I finally got it, but it took a lot of practice. Everywhere I went I worked hard to make new friends. I would introduce myself randomly and once in a while would meet someone who I would eventually build a relationship with. It is amazing how you learn to read people and understand what words work in an introduction and which do not by practicing over and over again.
I also learned that it was important to work at relationships. With friends or lovers I needed to constantly make efforts to stay in touch and initiate conversations or activities. Only after doing this, at least once, would the favor be returned by my new friends. It is like a piece of Silver that is very beautiful but to remain so you must polish it from time to time. Establishing a friendship takes work.
Having finally figured out that being respectful, cheerful and genuinely interested in other people could help me grow new friendships I the set my sights on people who I had known and never connected with in the past. Reaching back all the way to my childhood I reconnected with people I had known as long ago as kindergarten. Upon doing this I realized something. The new relationships I created with these individuals became very strong. It was as if there was something bringing us together that went beyond those bonds I had developed with newer acquaintances. These reconnections ended up being the Gold in my life.
I think there are two reasons why we form stronger bonds with people we meet earlier in life. One is that if we spend time with someone, let’s say for one year at age 5, we are spending one fifth of our life with that person. Even if we don’t see this person for 20 years we still spent a very large percentage of our life with that individual. Now if we meet someone and spend a year with them when we are 25, well that is only 1/25th of our lives. I would venture to say, depending on the depth of each relationship, most often there would be some sort of special bond that you might feel with your kindergarten friend that you can never create with a new acquaintance. That isn’t to say you couldn’t become better friends with your 25 year old colleague, but just that there is a certain bond, let’s call it the gold bond. (not the powder)
The other thing about youthful acquaintances is that more than likely you were exposed to similar environmental factors as them during a developmental period of your life. You can count on this when talking to them. Certain factors in your young life molded you into who you are and those same factors probably formed the people who were around you at that time as well, assuming that your friends at that time were probably your classmates, neighbors, or close relatives of some sort. I guess my point is that you can count on this and use it to help recreate relationships with these people as adults if you choose to. I have found that they ultimately have ended up becoming very close and valuable friends to me that have really helped to enrich my life.
If you would like to do something fun to practice this sign up on a web site like facebook.com, friendster.com, or classmates.com. Good luck!
-M@

1 Comments:

At 5:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree! I think childhood friends seem to be more trustworthy and golden. I kind of consider them as my childhood family in some way. We shared history together and that will never change. In 20-30 years the friends you make today will also share history with you and hopefully they too will turn to gold.

 

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