Give and give

I have a friend. A very good friend. He is a smart guy, does good things in life, goes to bed early, wakes up on time and steers clear of unwanted company. In short, he seems to be ideal. But he has one defect. He thinks too much and these aren't positive thoughts. The focus of attention is ‘I’. The world ceases to exist beyond that alphabet. Every once in a while we have a chat. I have no idea how we became so close. He isn’t too comfortable with the opposite sex. Our conversations revolve around serious stuff. Not plain gossip unlike most people. Such talks are healthy most days but sometimes it feels suffocating because we are too judgmental of our actions.

Most days he calls when he is feeling low and I play the role of an agony aunt. The same happened last night. It was a talk after some three weeks of hide and seek. He questioned his current job. He was unhappy with his boss.

“The man does nothing productive the whole day and expects me to slog my a** off”.
“… and to make matters worse, he gets paid in Lacs for that NOTHING”.

See, it is times like these that I shine as an advisor. Smoothness of thought and unrestricted flow of words takes place. Would it be fun to be at the top at such a young age? What about the journey? Twenty years down the line, I may be sitting in my boss’s chair and that is when I’ll know the worth of being seated there.

“The time is not here, not now”, I say.

I had a rather uncomfortable situation with my immediate senior today. She was angry because I had cut the line short to discuss my work responsibilities as I had to rush somewhere immediately. I told her she could go ahead with her discussion and I would continue mine after hers. My tone was calm. This was the moment I put my reading into practice. Who felt the discomfort in the end? Not me. I fail to understand why we make ourselves go through such unnecessary stress in our everyday lives?

After two hours, our telephonic conversation came to an end. My last question to him was

“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes, thank you for speaking to me”.

I heard a beep after ten seconds.

And then a big smile came on my face.

I have difficulty sharing my problems with people but when he opened up his world to me, I felt good. After all the point is not to indulge in give-and-take. The idea is to give-and-give without thinking of the returns.