I meet up with my friend C most weeks for a cuppa and a catch up. We were housemates at university and were reasonably good friends then and stayed in contact afterwards and our friendship has just gone from strength to strength since. I can’t really think of anything that I couldn’t say to her – not that I do tell her everything about my life, I just know that if there was something that I needed to say that I could say it.
She’s very driven, much more so than me but is very easy to talk to and is very down to earth. I was over at her house a couple of weeks ago and she was talking to me about someone she’d had an argument with a couple of days before. In all the years we have known each other, which is getting on for half my life, we have never ever come close to falling out and I can’t really imagine C falling out with anyone. Anyway, she and her husband were over at a friend’s house and the wife of the couple they had gone to see just started to make slight digs at C. Normally such things would be like water off a ducks back but, understandably, C did not appreciate someone deliberately trying to wind her up. In the end the conversation deteriorated so much that C walked out. She went and got in the car and her husband followed but the friend’s wife kept opening the car door to add an extra few morsels. In the end they drove off but after a couple of minutes C decided that they should go back so that she could apologise for her part in what happened and just to clear the air a bit. So they did and then went home.
The thing is that I know my friend and how unlike her it is to get into a situation like that. Don’t get me wrong, she gave as good as she got and it certainly wasn’t all one sided. It was interesting though when we chatted about it afterwards that it has really undermined her sense of who she was. In a lot of ways all I did was repeat to her what a friend said to me last year when I majorly fell out with a friend – that it is one example drawn from a whole range of examples. One example does not sum up who you are. Ultimately you have to look at these things in the round, accept your failings, but see the events in your life in the context of all that happens. Yes there are some things that are inexcusable, but generally we are more complex beings than that which can be summarised based on one event or one set of actions or one relationship. It doesn’t necessarily explain, or indeed excuse, particular behaviour, but just because one person thinks or says something about you doesn’t make it true. It should perhaps give us pause for thought, maybe it should make us consider why we acted that way in those particular circumstances, but it doesn’t automatically mean that you are some terrible person who has no redeeming characteristics (no matter what some might think of me!).
On occasion I am troubled by the friendship that went so wrong last year. Not because I have any massive guilt trip about it and not because I want the friendship back but because I don’t like the things that it potentially showed about me. But then when you talk to other people about things going on in their lives you find that they too have similar experiences. There are things that they have done or said that they feel equally shamed by and yet you consider their life in context and you consider your own life in context and you realise that normally the good outweighs the bad. That you have friends who love and respect you, that when it really matters you are there for your friends and them for you.
We are all flawed and imperfect and to some degree selfish, and those in our lives whom we want to love are destined to disappoint and frustrate us in some way.
We are all flawed and need to forgive and be forgiven
We are all flawed but maybe that is the best that we can offer.
She’s very driven, much more so than me but is very easy to talk to and is very down to earth. I was over at her house a couple of weeks ago and she was talking to me about someone she’d had an argument with a couple of days before. In all the years we have known each other, which is getting on for half my life, we have never ever come close to falling out and I can’t really imagine C falling out with anyone. Anyway, she and her husband were over at a friend’s house and the wife of the couple they had gone to see just started to make slight digs at C. Normally such things would be like water off a ducks back but, understandably, C did not appreciate someone deliberately trying to wind her up. In the end the conversation deteriorated so much that C walked out. She went and got in the car and her husband followed but the friend’s wife kept opening the car door to add an extra few morsels. In the end they drove off but after a couple of minutes C decided that they should go back so that she could apologise for her part in what happened and just to clear the air a bit. So they did and then went home.
The thing is that I know my friend and how unlike her it is to get into a situation like that. Don’t get me wrong, she gave as good as she got and it certainly wasn’t all one sided. It was interesting though when we chatted about it afterwards that it has really undermined her sense of who she was. In a lot of ways all I did was repeat to her what a friend said to me last year when I majorly fell out with a friend – that it is one example drawn from a whole range of examples. One example does not sum up who you are. Ultimately you have to look at these things in the round, accept your failings, but see the events in your life in the context of all that happens. Yes there are some things that are inexcusable, but generally we are more complex beings than that which can be summarised based on one event or one set of actions or one relationship. It doesn’t necessarily explain, or indeed excuse, particular behaviour, but just because one person thinks or says something about you doesn’t make it true. It should perhaps give us pause for thought, maybe it should make us consider why we acted that way in those particular circumstances, but it doesn’t automatically mean that you are some terrible person who has no redeeming characteristics (no matter what some might think of me!).
On occasion I am troubled by the friendship that went so wrong last year. Not because I have any massive guilt trip about it and not because I want the friendship back but because I don’t like the things that it potentially showed about me. But then when you talk to other people about things going on in their lives you find that they too have similar experiences. There are things that they have done or said that they feel equally shamed by and yet you consider their life in context and you consider your own life in context and you realise that normally the good outweighs the bad. That you have friends who love and respect you, that when it really matters you are there for your friends and them for you.
We are all flawed and imperfect and to some degree selfish, and those in our lives whom we want to love are destined to disappoint and frustrate us in some way.
We are all flawed and need to forgive and be forgiven
We are all flawed but maybe that is the best that we can offer.
2 comments:
I think its all part of growing and becoming who we really are. I've 'mucked' up a friendship or two in the past and would give my eye teeth to have them back. But (isnt there always one) I think its about making the most of our experiences and giving others the benefit of our 'changed'selves.
Spudgy - that's very true and I hadn't really thought about it like that before. Food for thought... Thanks.
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