The Attitude of Friendship

Why is it that you can be separated from some people for years and then reunited only to pick up where you left off? Why do others, after an absence of years, feel awkward creating a conversation with you?

The difference is in the connection initially made. Some people choose to live life on the surface (about ten miles wide and two inches deep). They care more about what you do than who you are. They care more about what value you offer to the conversation more than how you are perceived in it.

Then there are those with the attitude of friendship: those who don't care how you make your living and probably don't even ask. They are the same people who, if they didn't ask the first time, wouldn't think to ask the second time. For these people, they don't care what you do, they care about who you are.

The trick here is to follow Emerson's advice: "What you are sir, speaks so loudly that I can hardly hear what you say." The trick is to be who you are and not pretend to be something else.

If you or the people in your life consistently bring the conversation around to what you do for a living, then you may want to consider that your life isn't very deep.

If you can pick up with people right where you left off after years of time between you, then you are a person of substance: one whom others would be proud to call a friend.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: There is an attitude of friendship - to get a friend you must be one. Beyond that, everything else is acquaintances.

Some people believe that they can create friendships with business acquaintances. Perhaps some can. But if the only reason you're creating a friendship is so that you new friend will spend their money with you, then that's not friendship - that's manipulation and the friendship will die in the absence of a checkbook.

Friends are people who don't care what you do or what you're selling. Acquaintances are what you have in your life when your discussions are based on what they do and not who they are.

You can try to create friendships with acquaintances but make sure it's solid enough to survive the day when your new friend starts spending his money with someone else. A real friend will support the decision. A fairweather friend won't call anymore.

So ask yourself today in every chance meeting: friend or acquaintance? You may be surprised.