20 May, 2002 - 12:15 p.m.

I read somewhere over the weekend that if your friends don't love you then you should find new ones. Now while theoretically speaking that sounds like the most logical thing to do, I imagine that putting it into practice would be somewhat harder to do. I mean, isn't that where the whole saying about not teaching an old dog new tricks falls into play?

Sure I know that I can't speak for everyone - but in my experience, I have noticed that as each year passes, the friends that I have gotten to know over the course of my years grow dearer to me, and although there may be an odd few that have sparked a new friendship along the way, as a general rule, we don't pick up many strays and make them our confidantes. It just doesn't seem to work that way.

So regardless of whether we feel fulfilled by our friendships, or whether we think that each person puts in equal amounts of effort, most times people will just accept that this is the "give and take" aspect of it all. Some might say that it's one person in the twosome being a pushover. You might also argue that it's simply because one knows the language of compromising more fluently.

I'm sure that every person at one time or another has felt that their kindness was abused, or that their tolerance level of a friends innappropriate actions had been reached. After all, nobody's perfect. But when in all this does it truly become intolerable? When should you stop calling them up and lending the effort when they never seem to call you? When do you stop answering the phone at 4am on a Monday to their drunken rambling when you were supposed to have gone to see a movie together the evening before, and the saddest point being that you waited up for their call until 2am? And why, when they do call us up at the very last minute, do we feel obligated to run round a get ready, if only to have to drive a half hour away for a twenty minute coffee rendezvous?

If I were smart, I would have stopped calling a long time ago, right after they never returned my phone call. But then they call up, and they're always as nice as pie .. and because we can't go around holding grudges all the time, we forgive them and move on. But then the next time that they promise to call, and don't - why do we wait around again, only for it to come several weeks after they said they would .. why is it that we just let it pass again?

I'm sure I've done the exact same thing to other people before, but isn't it interesting how we never notice how callous we can be to others until we experience the feeling ourselves.

So although I realise that this is something that I should have been doing all along, my newest resolution is to not be as unfeeling to others who want me around more often. Because maybe they're the ones who do really appreciate me, and in time, hopefully I will learn to appreciate them just as much back.