A Better Title

Sometimes I really feel that I’ve been taken for granted by some of my friends. Note that I really mean some, and I can name a few of my friends who are not as bad as what I’m going to write in this entry.

There was this girl who haven’t talked to me for a couple of years already. And then all of a sudden, she messaged me on MSN, asking me how my FYP went and whether I’ve got a job already. Despite being surprised, we chatted for a couple of lines, before her true intention suddenly rose to view: her PC kept on giving her an error and she wanted me to help her solve the problem.

Another friend of mine suddenly called me for the first time ever since we got to know each other. It turned out that he wanted me to help him with his website assignment.

Well, so much for being one of those better-informed in the IT field. It is not that I mind helping out. To put it in an often-overused quote: It makes me happy to make people, especially my friends, smile. The thing is that I do not officially open a technical support line, and thus being only sought after when people need me to solve their problems only make me feel like one.

I couldn’t help but think to myself: Am I really that unimportant? Am I meant to be forgotten? Is it such the case that people will only come to me when they need me? Am I just being taken for granted by these so-called friends? Why can’t they ask me how I am doing instead of asking me to do a favour for them?

***

But then I thought about it again, and decided to put it in another perspective.

For those friends who haven’t talked to me in ages, I myself have not talked to them in ages. Has it not been a case of me taking them for granted then? Have I actually made the effort to say hi and ask them how they are doing? And haven’t I done the same thing when I ask people to do me a favour when I haven’t talked to them for a while?

It’s much too easy to put the blame on others when we are not perfect ourself. It’s like being a hypocrite, when we expect others to do something when we are not willing to do it ourself.

So take this story and reflect: for each person that you think have taken you for granted, think again, have you yourself taken them for granted? If you know you have, perhaps it’s time to say hi and ask them how they’re doing. If you have never taken them for granted, and they do take you for granted… well, perhaps it’s not worth your time to bother with these people.

Or maybe… it’s just a case that I’m not good in maintaining friendships, in advancing from the acquaintance stage to the friend stage, and most of my contacts happen to be in the former. I looked at my chat logs and realised that I only talk to less than 15 people in the past few months. Even then, out of these, less than 10 are worth a real chat (i.e. not those hi-how-are-you-how-have-you-been-oh-i-see-and-silence-and-bye thing.)