The beginning of friendships

Friendship is a delightful thing, isn't it? One of my favourite staring-into-space activities is to pick a friendship and work out how it is that my friend and I became friends in the first place. They often have an element of serendipity or divine intervention to them. I find that you're just acquaintances to begin with (nothing special) and before you know it, you're knee-deep in a valued friendship. How does it happen?!

There is one friendship I made last semester that I keep reflecting on because it reminds me not to judge by worldly standards, nor to hold on to my initial judgments too tightly. I also reflect on this friendship because I have been so enriched by it.

So today, I tell you the story of T and me. T was in two of my classes last semester and my first impression of him was that he was quite shy. I didn't think we'd progress any further than just classmates. Plus, I just wrote him off as a young person with lots of study experience and not much work/life experience.

He surprised me one day, when he said something in response to my noisy thinking-out-aloud. "Maybe he's not so shy after all," I thought.

A few weeks later, he approached me to join my group for a class assignment, at the suggestion of a mutual friend (that serendipitous/interventionist touch). And that was the beginning of our friendship.

I discovered that T is very patient, reliable, and giving. He shared his time, study notes and almond M&Ms as we studied. He is also very smart and hard-working. I found out that he wasn't quite the inexperienced young 'un that I thought he was; he'd had considerable experience in a respected, international, mid-tier accounting firm back home.

Reflecting on this friendship gives me a lot of joy because it turned my first impression upside-down and reminds me to look beyond the surface in people. Be open to people whom you initially think you may not connect with.

As an aside, if you need a bit of a pick-me-up, reflect on your friendships and think back to how your dearest friendships began and deepened over time.