Understanding Friends...

[chandrahasa]

A couple of days back while discussing with my friends we hit upon an interesting subject. The point of focus was one of us and the argument was mostly directed at the person. The gist of the idea was what struck me the most. The premise was that most of my friends shared their ideas, problems and daily events to one of my friends who is an

Comments

[anonymous]

I have no clue why I read this blog in particular. But I connect to it a great deal. According to me there are two categories of people: One's forever the 'listeners' and the other is the 'expressors' if I may call them so. It all depends on our 'modus operandi' to gain clarity! The former category needs a sounding board (and there's nothing wrong with that!). They need to feed on the opinion of someone they 'connect' with. They trust their listeners enough to seek their opinion. Whether they act accordingly or not is a different story.

Now the 'listener' is a category completely the opposite. People seem to connect with the 'listeners' at some level almost instantaneously. Even total strangers connect with them with ease and confide in them. When such 'listeners' are your friends its but natural that their friends also see them in the same light. But it would be a mistake to expect the listener to share his experiences with you because they won't. They feels that you are already dealing with something and wouldn't want to add more to them. Besides he is already in a 'listening mode' with you. So he is very 'used to' his role. And trust me he is doing a lot of thinking to understand your point of view. In parallel there will also be a thread of an 'unbiased' opinion (to sort things out) going on. But at the end of it both of you are learning - you do that by bouncing off your thoughts to him and he by feeding and listening to you and your emotions/ logic/ questions/ conclusions/ confusion. I fall into the listening category and believe me there are some complete strangers who've confided in me. You can also be very sure that these listeners will never ever judge you for what you confide in them..in fact that is the most important reason for them to don that role. Neither is being glorified here though. Each category has its share of merits and demerits.

[ebony_nivory]

Thanks :) your comment along with Haas's post give me a new perspective to think about, My transitions lay along the above two concepts.