Not too long ago, a friend of mine was defriended by one of our
mutual friends on Facebook. Let’s call
them friend D and friend C. Now, most sane people would say, so what? It’s just
Facebook. However, you have to consider
two things – one, Facebook has become a vital part of our livelihood, together
with Twitter, Google+, etc, and two, the majority of my friends are not sane….lol! Anyway, friend D got disconnected from friend
C’s circle of friends not because she did her wrong or she betrayed her. Quite frankly, if I’m going to base it on
what friend D told me, it was quite mundane.
It was because friend D didn’t report to friend C what one of our other
mutual friend was going through and that, although friend C had picked a fight
with the mutual friend months before, leading to a public blow out (on
Facebook, of course, and yes, I saw it unravel…lol!), friend C felt that she
was owed to be told since she is supposedly the closest to the mutual friend. I’m pretty sure there were more underlying
circumstances other than the reason I was told, but at the end of the day, the
question that goes through my mind is, if friend C was really interested, why
didn’t she contact our mutual friend?
Now, I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going through
friend C’s mind. I’m one of those people
who do not ask because it is not in my place to insert myself in a situation
unless I was asked to be a part of it.
However, I can’t help but wonder why we feel entitled to other people’s
situations? It is one thing if one of my
very good friends come to me and confided about what they’re going through, but
it’s a whole different ballgame if I spread their circumstances to the world. On a personal level, it wouldn’t bother me if
people knew about the things I went and have been going through. The way I look at it, if I really want to
keep it a secret, I wouldn’t have told anybody to begin with. However, not all people are like me. Most people want their privacy and they will
tell the world their circumstances when they are ready to do so. That day may never come, but it is their
prerogative with whom they need to share or not share the information with.
In the scenario mentioned, there are a lot of questions that
go through my mind. However, for the
purpose of this topic, the one question that I am trying to fathom is, why did
she take it so hard that she was not informed of our mutual friend’s current
state? It would have been easier to
understand if I didn’t know about how scathing she could be and that the things
that she said made several people guarded with her. I just really don’t understand why she got angry
that she wasn’t one of the first one to know amongst our group of friends. Why is it very hard for many people to accept
that they will not be privy to all kinds of sensitive information all the
time? Have we gone really arrogant that
we shudder at the though that not everybody confides in us?
Many of my friends have told me that they feel like they can
confide in me all the time. While that
is really flattering, I honestly don’t think that they tell me everything that
goes on with their lives, and don’t expect them to. The only things I offer my friends are my
ears for listening, my shoulder to cry on, and my heart for compassion. In my humble opinion, that is the basic
foundation of friendship.
So, going back to my story, one, I hope friend D will not
get angry for me telling the situation.
Friend C has defriended me as well, so I’m pretty sure this will just
add to the things that she’s angry about with me (I honestly don’t know why,
and at this point, I’ve given up all hope in trying to understand her). Nonetheless, the one thing we need to realize
is that, our friends don’t owe us anything but friendship and vice versa. If we cannot accept that, then we’re not
really friends to begin with.
No comments:
Post a Comment