building briddges

I’ve learnt so much about boundaries these days. (People, buy that book immediately. It is sold in the all the time best seller section in every major bookstores worldwide)

There is a difference between hurting and harming.

Going to the dentist might hurt but it will not harm you. It will do you good.

Eating candies does not hurt you but it will harm you eventually.

There are many things in life, many relationships, many decisions and actions that will hurt us for the good, or else harm us eventually.

Interesting facts. And yet, very tricky? Which one is which?

Seeing changes in people that we thought we have always known is intriguing. Could that be a fact that we do not actually know the particular person that well, or may be drastic changes do really take places. There is this one particular close friend whom used to spend every single day with me. If we are not hanging out then we’ll be talking to each other on the phone for countless hours. But then, I don’t know what happen, we just cant do that anymore. We are still the same person and we are still who we are. Nothing drastic has happened in our lives, so what is going on?

May be we are just in different places.

Funny how I can sit in front of this friend whom I have known since we were both in high school, and found out that I cannot talk about things that we used to talk about. The chemistry has changed. The level of trust, proximity and comforts have changed. All of a sudden I see the invisible boundaries that both of us have built against each other.

What do we do then?

I have always been the kind of person who wants to make friendship lasts to the end of day. Mg gurls and I made a pact that one day, we will be sitting in our garden, in our country house of course, having coffee with scone plus jam and cream, talking for hours about our grandchildren and our business empires (haha! Hey, we’ve been blessed with huge dream and vision, don’t blame our ambitions!). But it has only been 5 years, me and this particular friend, and we could not talk to each other anymore. Of course we have sat for coffee and nachos and talk for hours.

When you used to be having a heart-to-heart kind of conversation, the tears-almost-dropped, you-have-to-handle-the-truth kind of conversation with someone, then you will know if your latest conversation is just an airy fairy one.

But then again I learn, I could never lose the friendship. What we have had, we will always have. Things are not always going to be smooth, easy and all sparks up. Any normal long term relationship will always experience a sunny day (everything good), a stormy day (all fights and about) and sometimes some draughts (when everything is dull and crispy haha).

That’s why the boundaries book teaches us not only to have a few of close relationships in our lives. I’m not suggesting anyone to start an affair pretty soon, by all means it is referring to friendship kind of relationships. We should have more than 2 best-friends, more than 5 close friends and unlimited number of friends. This is for the purpose of letting our friends to become a normal human being. They can go through phases in their lives, becoming whoever they want to be, taking any necessary spaces from us temporarily and be back anytime they want to. In the meanwhile, we’ll still have the other best friends and the other close friends to lean on when we need them the most.

Nobody can go through life without the support of solid friendships. Keep that in mind.

I have a rock solid family to whom I can go home to every night for tender loving care and heart-to-heart conversations. But besides that, I also need a solid circle of trust to whom I can share my world with. Anybody who knows me well knows that I am a very open person. I don’t keep anything private about my life. But I don’t tell all my secrets to one person. A best friend knows some parts, another best friend knows another part, yes that burutss gurl, she might have known too much and that’s how I keep myself in balance.