I Like Friends Who Respect Time, Silence and Space

My best friends can barely be counted on one hand. They are few, but great, with sincere feelings and without double meanings. It is a knowing, selfless friendship that knows no blackmail, which freely offers to encourage me, to make my life richer…

How many friends do you have?

Some people are proud to have an army of friends, collecting names on social networks, people they barely know, and yet always click “like” on their publications.

Good friends are not just names and photos on our phone. They are people who pay attention to our words and read our gestures.

They are lives that fit into our empty corners, voices that fill our spaces in good and bad times, they are the laughter that diminishes problems and people who we can build our lives with.

But… how can we define good friends? Don’t think of favors. Friendship should not be based only on “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours .” Sometimes, beyond support, fun or mutual aid, a good friendship, a GREAT friendship, is also based on silence, space, and time.

The language of silence

Surely this has happened to you. Being in a meeting with other people, and feeling real discomfort when there is a sudden silence.

That’s when those empty comments to relieve the emptiness arise; where everyone looks at each other’s faces without knowing quite what to do.

It is something that happens most often with strangers. But sometimes we feel that same discomfort with some family or coworkers. Now…what’s that about?

Distrust and restlessness. It is as if the silence opened the doors to quiet those thoughts that cause fear…Are they judging me? What could they be thinking of me now?

This doesn’t happen with a good friend. We could also say, by way of reflection, that we as people practice the value of silence very little.

Where souls rest quietly, where complicity acquires its true meaning. We are people who do not need words to be united or to feel good. S ilence is comfortable with the people we love because we allow ourselves to be ourselves with all our “authenticity” without being judged. Silence joins hearts and relaxes our minds.

The lack of time…

“But what’s going on…?, it seems you have forgotten everyone, you always do your own thing and you don’t remember anyone else!”

Some of your friends may be like this. You spent a day without any communication for no particular reason, just because you wanted to or because you didn’t see the need to constantly be in touch. And soon, the criticism appears.

That is, some people do not understand such things. Some think that friendship is like a news bulletin where you give updates everyday and where every few hours we have to communicate what we do, what we think, or “how we exist.”

The moment the pressure of obligation appears, we feel a bit bothered. Because whoever does not respect privacy and even time off, does not understand the true value of friendship.

There are people who for whatever reason, either work or personal, have been apart for months and even years. However, when they meet again, that magic complicity that illuminates our hearts continues to exist. It is as if no time had passed because the feeling is the same.

Has this ever happened to you?

Personal spaces, public spaces

We could say that the basic problem is that many people do not adequately manage their loneliness, emotions, or respect personal spaces.

We all have or have had, those friends that needed to be in contact at every moment to share a thought, fear, worry… And indeed, we were stopping everything to listen to them.

Gradually we realized that this person had made very little time to manage their own problems, to the point where they were projecting their fears and negativity onto others.

And without a doubt, we would do anything for them, but with a limit to respect our personal spaces, our identity and our emotional balance.

At the end of the day, t rue friendships must not be heavy or toxic. They must harmonize our lives as companions, confidants who know how to respect space, time and silence. Good friends always live in the more authentic side of the heart