I Named My Post 'An-Dong-Ni'

How many people are willing to open doors to an acquaintance?

An old pal of mine used to nag about how proud I am, for not trying to keep in touch with him and some of the old friends that we used to hang out with; or not having the decency to get to know more people apart from my pathetic cycle of a handful of close friends. It took me long enough to realize the value of true friends, and it took me even longer for me to be able to accept new people as the doors are normally shunned or blocked. As proud as I am cognizant, I find no reason to approach people naturally. What’s worst, I even find no motive to be open to others whom I won’t have the chance to keep a solid friendship. I am not a risk taker, more of a coward and somehow of a milksop. 

As a junior, I was relatively close to some of my seniors; maybe due to the fact that we attend the same church service every Sunday or just the simple natural fact that they are my seniors and we as juniors were supposed to be the amenable, obedient junior and tag along their tails and follow whatever they say because (in my opinion) they know best. 2 batches of my seniors graduated, it took a while to readjust, as I didn’t find much time to mingle around with other people while I was still ‘raw’ and ‘innocent’ in med school. Cut to the chase, I may only know one or two of my seniors in the current 5th or 6th year out of all the hundreds of other people. I don’t find it comfortable already to do all the pseudo chattering and blasphemy that I used to innocently follow my previous seniors to do. Maybe I grew slightly matured and started to get hold to life here. Unknowingly, the doors started to rust and soon after I felt too comfortable settling down with my own group of buddies that I bugged and that’s it. I just could not be bothered to know anyone else beyond my range. 

An interesting Sunday topped up with an interesting hard boiled egg that was supposed to be soft boiled

I had an interesting Sunday evening at my senior’s place, to come to think of it; I wouldn’t want to call him my senior. It’s that odious label that keeps people in a certain distant. A random invite from a friend over to his place to chill and have a little conversation or two, I’ve never even talked to him in person other than the habitual greetings which I shamelessly admit that I dislike to do so to an acquaintance moreover a stranger. Maybe it just happened at the right moment? He approached me at the right moment and I somehow momentarily decided to put down my pride and neglect all the awkwardness. 

You see, how much people can we engage to if we are willing to put down our overly abused self-centeredness and pride and just accept people? Maybe not anyone but some of the people amongst our community, you will never know who you might end up with as a real good friend.