I am not an expert in this subject but just wanted to share some of my experiences and what I have observed in those. My life at different places has given me an opportunity to meet a variety of people and encounter experiences which I wouldn’t have, had I stayed in my hometown for all the years. First 15 years of my life was spent in my hometown Khammam then I went to Vijayawada for my intermediate stayed there for two years. My engineering and two years of my first work life was spent in Hyderabad and then I moved to the USA for my MBA, stayed there for 3 years. The next 5 years were spent in Hyderabad and Bangalore, now I am back to the City of Pearls, Hyderabad.
When I was in my seventh standard, I and one of my best friends quarreled just because one other friend told me something against him. As soon as he told that, I blindly believed him and stopped talking to my friend for six months. I didn’t even thought of giving benefit of doubt to a person who I know for 3 years by then. Fortunately, six months of silence between us has made our friendship grow stronger and we ended up as best friends. I am aware that we were too young to analyze and think of the concept of giving the benefit of the doubt. But I have been seeing well-educated adults who are just putting his/her friend on the wrong side when a small disturbance happens. The only way to look at the situation is, there might be a 95% probability of your friend being wrong but just imagine if your analysis is wrong and your friend falls in the 5% probability. Are you ready to end the relationship with your friend just because the analytical part of your brain didn’t work well? I have seen many who have put an end to their relationship either with a friend or a cousin just because they assumed the intention of the other person is wrong. So give benefit to the other person when you are in doubt because it is easy to break relations but takes immense time and effort to build those.
The second aspect I want to share is the way people take making fun as granted without realizing the fact that it might backfire. I have a friend by name Hari who I know since my 11th standard, he makes fun of people irrespective of whether he/she is his friend or not. Everyone, including the person who he is making fun of, enjoys that. But there are times when the fun part goes beyond certain boundaries of friendship. Hari has no best friends or even friends till that time, but he got close to a person in our class in a very short time. As he does with others, he made fun of his friend also. The only difference is that Hari has crossed the limits many times while making fun of him, which let him down in front of others. So the friendship ended up to be ephemeral, as respecting each other was missing in that. Making fun of friends is fine, but the way he made fun of his friend has hurt him and made him feel insulted. Hari never realized that he is touching the emotions of people in the name of making fun, so he ended up having no friends for himself.
The third aspect I want to share is something that I have been observing from the last 2-3 years. It might be because of the place I grew up and the people I spent my childhood with, according to me closeness is a feeling which comes through understanding. You need to have a very good understanding to feel that someone is close to you. You should be able to expect their behaviour or at least able to understand why the person has behaved in such a way which is totally unexpected by you. I am a vegetarian, I have a friend who is a non-vegetarian. If he offers me non-vegetarian saying that it is vegetarian I will eat it without a second thought. Because I am sure that he never does such a thing and even if he does he will stop me just before the food goes into my mouth. That is the kind of trust that we have for each other. Not just that one friend, I have many friends like that who I share such trust which was built over time.
I don’t say time is a very important factor in building relations, I have experience of getting close to people and developing trust for each other in a short time. Understanding is what takes the center-stage to make two people close to each other. But these days the aspect of closeness is totally taking a different shape. People are feeling close just because they spend hours and hours on chatting and say everything they do on a daily basis. Telling each other what you eat and what you do is not sharing, telling each other what you feel is sharing. And, that sharing happens only with few people and that sharing may or may convert into understanding. But once it converts there is hardly any way of going back. Trust people but don’t consider them as your best friends unless you feel it.
