When enough is enough

We all know that nobody is perfect and that each of us both has the positive and the negative aspect of our personality. We learn to live with ourselves but then what about other people? Some just can’t take our personality because a positive aspect we think we have can be perceived as negative by another person. Misinterpretation, malice and other whatnots can cause a relationship to deteriorate.

When we go through life, we find friends along the way and part of having a friend is learning to live with each other and accepting each other as who we really are. This is the difference between an acquaintance and a friend. A friend knows my guts and its ok. As donkey pointed out in Shrek “Friends… forgive each other”. But before one reaches that stage, we have to start getting to know the other person first and what makes them tick. It’s all part of the ball game.

We start with throwing jokes at each other, which is great fun specially if the group are on the same wavelength and the simplest phrase can arouse a mighty guffaw of fun and laughter. But there are times when our humor can be tasteless and be “below the belt” so to speak. Instead of having fun, we end up making fun of another person, or worse, be the person everyone is laughing at. But to know the limit is really very tricky. One must be extra sensitive when it comes to the feelings of the other person but sometimes, blinded by the sheer enormity of the banter, we tend to continue joking to the point of exaggeration and we end up hurting someone. Or as I said, being hurt.

In this case, there are some who are able to say, “enough is enough” and “hey that’s too much”. And the other party should be sensible enough to know when to stop. This is the ideal situation but this is mostly not the case. Some tends to just throw a half-laugh on the whole thing and bottle up the hurt inside and when the time comes, burst to finally expressing themselves or worse reach the point of no return. And once the circle of trust is broken, it is very difficult to bring it all back again. I’ve had that and I tell you it’s a very sad situation.

So what I’m finally pointing out is that to be able to enjoy real friendship, we need to set our limits. Human beings are creatures of limitation. It is important that we keep a certain distance with each other to enjoy each other’s company. Its like two trees, we cannot be too close or too far. One must know how to put that limit and let the other know where the limit is. That the other person knows if the limit is being set and where. That way we maintain our respect for each other. It also very important to always maintain an avenue of communication open because we are not psychic to be able to guess what’s going through the other person’s head. And to keep in mind that in order to live a wonderful life, one must accept one's self and the people around us.