Who can "we" trust?

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Today, after reading tarazkp's post, I was thinking about a question. In his post, he emphasizes very well the importance of others being like a balance of scales when it comes to understanding whether we are trying to make excuses that will get us nowhere.

Often, when we encounter some kind of obstacle in our path, or even in our thinking, we tend to stop if the path is boggy.

We are often led to give up without even trying to overcome the difficulty in our actions or thinking.

The pain, which is even “real” in many situations, awakens the deepest of basic instincts. The instinct for self-preservation.

Even when our integrity has never been at risk, and sometimes it's only our pride, or what we think might lead our pride down a path we don't want to lose, that makes us avoid making any kind of sacrifice.

That's when we come up with the biggest and most lame excuses for not moving forward, or for letting our initial intentions fall by the wayside.

We make an act of contrition and let the apparent difficulty inherent in anything we do make us think that tomorrow might be a better day to get back out there.

But we never do it again.

We seek comfort and peace of mind. We don't like being challenged, or somehow losing control in predictability, even if that means disguising our weakness as a procrastination trait, which we think suits us well.

That's not the only problem. In an evolved society, individuals are, in a way, the mirror of the other being in front of them. We serve as each other's scales.

But with society moving more and more towards a weak acceptance of outside criticism, we take comments that could even be somewhat “offensive” as a personal attack. We mix up friendship with something that's more convenient for us. We don't believe that our friends will let us down, and so the ability to talk openly about each other's faults is now almost universal.

I can still remember friendships I've had since I was very young, where this premise never existed. We knew that it was important for each other to have a friend's opinion. Even if that opinion didn't correspond to our current idea or conception.

Friendship doesn't mean always agreeing. Friendship means being able to say what's on your mind, even if it hurts or goes against what the other person believes. Not agreeing doesn't mean there can't be points of contact. Friendship is much more than blindly agreeing with what the other person thinks, just to make them comfortable and to avoid making ourselves uncomfortable with what we might hear in response.

The strongest friendships I have today, and which I've maintained over the years, have meant, and continue to mean, a continuous effort to listen, to understand, and often to have the courage to tell the other person to get up off the ground, because time doesn't stand still.

Do you also have friends you can count on, who tell you things that might not be the most pleasant at first?

I rely a lot on what they tell me, and of course on what I think. It's important to know how to listen to yourself - as many influencers now say: “Know how to listen to your own body...”, but also to know that on the other side there is someone who wants to help you. Even if we have to let ourselves be bothered by ideas we're not comfortable with.

I hope you enjoy this little reflection today.

Bem Hajam🍀

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