Friendship

This time I want to write about friendships and how to deal with disappointments.

I heard some time ago that “Friendship may be for a reason, for a season or for life”.

My experience indicates that this is perhaps true but my earlier expectations were that friendships should be for life! Hence, disappointments I experienced over the years. I have already written about my mother’s influence on my life that made me more idealistic than would be practical if I was less so. She also bought me Anne of Green Gables when I was rather young. Seven, eight? Something like that. I expected to have a Diana in my life and this would mean for the whole life. In fact I think I may be lucky to have my best friend for life. Barbara or Basia affectionately is such a person for me. Unfortunately, I live in Sydney and she lives in Warsaw. But we talk often. Skype and free calls from Poland to most countries in the world help us keep frequent contact. I must confess that when I moved to Australia and was busy being happily married, building wealth and career; then I did not contact Basia all that often. However whenever I was in Poland I spent a lot of time in the familiar home of Basia’s parents; Home that I felt was very warm, safe and welcoming. For me it was  more of a family home than my parents place. Maybe, it felt that way because Basia’s mother was not a successful working woman but a successful mother and home maker? And this is me making such a statement, a career woman who even does not have children. A subconscious regret, I wonder?

So, I have my friend for life, I am grateful for her presence and I should always keep it in mind especially when I feel lonely or sorry for myself.  I will still whinge at disappointing other friendships, I experienced in my life. There were so many times I felt deceived and used. Oh, poor me, poor me!! Being sorry for myself is definitely not the way to live.

Since I expected all my friendships to be based on trust, honesty and unconditional love; I was looking at my friends through rose coloured glasses. I painted them in my mind with idealistic paint brushes and pretty colours. They were wonderful pictures, unfortunately the reality not always followed. I do not blame the people who disappointed me and I do not blame myself for being too naïve, but I must say that when things soured it has always been very painful and disorientating.

My first very best two friends disappeared from my life through untimely death. They were both in their twenties. It was very painful and shocking to a young person. Death? This was not going to happen to anyone I knew and definitely not to myself. Not for a long time anyhow. That time seemed to be that far away that it even did not seem to be a possibility. The death of Ala and Ela was very difficult to accept. I was very close to both of them and I would call them my best friends of the times. It was very sad and the death of such young women seemed unjust. It left a big vacuum in my emotional life. Yet, however painful it was, there was just sadness and pain in me but there was no betrayal in our friendship.

Such experienced came later and more than once. When Basia was telling me that a couple of my friends were making a pass at my partner, I could not believe it. In fact I did not believe her; I could not accept that my girlfriend could even contemplate taking my boyfriend away from me. When I look at the situations from the distance of time I see how gullible I was. But this naivety was a form of self protection. I did not want to know what was going on in the treacherous minds of people I trusted. I would not have been able to deal with it. So, I denied it.

Now I am wondering how best to go through such situations. First of all, I need to assume that people are not perfect and that they have their own agendas. Such agendas that they are going to keep to themselves, not necessarily noble ones. They will deal with their dilemmas the best way they can. Those ways may not be the best for me. If it is a friend I decided to give my trust to, it should be combined with acceptance that I can not know all about the person and that I can be one day faced with surprises not necessarily pleasant. I should enjoy pleasant times together with eyes open to see flows. Some of them are acceptable; nobody is perfect like Some Like it Hot tells us. Some may have a potential to hurt me. I should be able to recognize such situations and have courage to talk it over with the friend. No dramas, but bringing my observations to an open and ask for a comment.  Then it may be the time to realize that the friendship does not rest on solid foundations and redefine the relationship. It may be even a time to part, but my personal boundries need to be protected. This is my job and responsibility. Painful? Disappointing? Yes! Still, if I could replay some of the earlier situations I would have protected myself better. I would experience less heartache.  

My Role Models

I am a learner. This was established with the help of The Strength Finder 2.0, so I have it officially certified by Tom Rath.  When I look back being a learner by character explains some of my past heartaches and disappointments. When the knowledge of my immediate family started to be insufficient to direct my development further I needed new role models. With my little experience, I had at the time, when I established or imagined that a person knows more than I do in some area, I put this person immediately on my mental pedestal. If it was a handsome man, I fell in love with him. Romantic little girl. Luckily or not, I have not met many men worthy of my affection, so my falling in love was not that frequent. This relates, of course, to times when I was in my teens. Sometimes I was not impressed by much but, as a true learner, I tried to learn new skills even such that were not worth learning. Like smoking cigarettes, for example. This was actually plane silly, but I was eighteen, so it was my job to be silly. At least in some areas. And the man that influenced me in this field later became my husband. I obeyed even before I made my vows. 

When I was in my mid twenties and had the brain like a razor (so sharp,  not always painfully cutting) I worked as a computer programmer. I was actually headhunted by one of the best consulting programmers in the country. It looks that I am boasting, maybe I am, but it is nice to realize good things that I did not comprehend earlier. Anyhow, this boasting is even relevant to the story I want to tell. The consultant, let's call him Tad, became my manager and I was happily programming away under his auspices. He was really a very clever person and at some stage he was sent to France on some sort of professional exchange. In his absence two of his friends and colleagues took over management of the unit. I was given Tad’s projects to complete. After few months the man came back in a rather poor state. I am not sure what his problem was, but there were talks about psychological or maybe even psychiatric problems. He supposedly behaved in strange way. Myself, I could not see much difference in him. He seemed a bit depressed and silent, but when we talked he seemed the same as he always had been. My political knowledge was none at that time, so I did not connect Tad’s situation with potential involvement in (or of) communistic secret service. There were some talks about Tad suspecting that his conversations were tapped even at home. I do not mean only telephone conversations but bugs installed at his home. Such things were done and feared in those times in Poland.

Now, I suspect that his assignment had a price of cooperation with the communistic government and that he refused it. This would have implications of losing a well paid job. He lost it. I do not know what had happened to him after that.  His friends and colleagues who belonged to the top three people in the company did not defend him and in fact increased their influence and income after Tad was removed. They were a married couple, who earlier I placed on my professional pedestal together with Tad. Something did not seem right even if I could not put my finger on it. 

The reason why this story came to my mind is the memory of my agonizing for months over honesty of the couple, value of their “friendship” for Tad and their value as people. I had great problems with seeing them as not perfect, after all there were my role models and that implied honesty and truthfulness. The world did not seem to be well organized or maybe it was only a glitch?  I did not know how to live in such a world, so I changed the job and suppressed the memories. Until now.

My Early Teachers

For quite a while I have been asking myself the question: How to live? Maybe not always in such an explicit manner, maybe even not always consciously, but it seems that I have been searching for ever. Have I found my answers? Sometimes I thought I knew them and I knew how to live my life to the full and in such a way that it really mattered. The times of such clarity were wonderful and I hope they will keep returning. For me there is no one answer that will serve me all my life, or at least I do not know such an answer as yet. I have recognized my core values and they are relatively stable. I could also give some generic answers to my question. One of such answers is : It is important to live with honesty; or It is important to love… For some reason such answers do not seem satisfactory at times so I continue searching. I know that I bore my friends at times with my existential subjects and divagations. Actually, I do not have such friends at the moment with whom I could talk about existential issues. So, I thought I will write. Maybe some clarity will come this way.

Some readers may find the title of my blog puzzling. How to Live Prime Minister? I am Polish born, with years living in Sydney I became an Australian and now I feel very much European but since Australia is my home country I should perhaps call myself a cosmopolitan or a citizen of the world. How pathetic! The title of the blog came from one of the situation of Polish politics and I wrote about it in my other blog. Here is explanation.

There were times I was expecting answers from my mother. And I got my answers! You should live romantically, timidly, honestly, but you should not think much of yourself. They were not very useful answers, but they got  deeply ingrained into my psyche. She meant well. She did not want me to get disappointed with myself but she set me up to be often disappointed with less idealistic reality than I had expected. She also told me that I should strive to help others. She did that herself so often and I thought it was touching. Some of her compulsive giving took  a form of mollycoddling. This was directed at my brother and I am grateful that I was not the subject of this type of misguided generosity. Marek was not a happy person and I did not like many sides of his behaviour. This is a different subject altogether. Relationships with others and how to love and not be used by the love objects. I sometimes feel that I have been used many times in my life. Have I been using others? Perhaps I am not that innocent as I would like others to be? Hm…On reflection, this is life and this is how it is.

I spent many, many months with my grandparents far away from my working parents. Maybe this outsourcing of motherhood had some influence on my later decision to stay childless? Very early on I did not see mother role being played by my beautiful and very young mother. Grandma was something different. She was actually great in her energetic, no nonsense way. What did she teach me? The answer is not that obvious, but I am sure she had stamped my life profoundly. I will come back to it.

But grandfather, oh my sweet grandpa. He taught me kindness. This is one of my very core values still. Always has been. I still see him as quintessentially good man. A real softy ruled by my very bossy grandma. I felt very much loved by him. This was such a treasure, this love of his. There was no question about it, no doubts that I was loved. I was loved by my grandma also but she did not expressed her feelings in such a way that I could understand it when I was, say, four years old. My mother love was not clear to me at all in my very first years of getting to know the world. Later, when I was a young woman, I thought I was loved by her and later some doubts sneaked in. Again, I need to explore the subject of my beautiful, weak, romantic mother who searched for value in her looks.  

What about my father? This was a complicated relationship. He was not my mother type of a man, but he was such a good man. We all hurt him badly by keeping distance from him while he needed love. He taught me work ethics, he taught me honesty, calling spade a spade, he showed me I can do things I had not expected I could. Like riding bicycle or later when I was a delicate sweet sixteen he taught me to ride a heavy Russian bike. The lesson was – I can do whatever I set my mind to and there are no limits for girls. Tony Robbins does not measure up to my father's positive influence on me. Father had to keep his involvement in by upbringing under wraps.  Mother saw my role in life in a different way. Luckily, with involvement of two of my parents I got a well rounded education as far as my future role of a woman. 

The big four Mother, Father, Grandpa and Grandma were my first role models and first teachers. It was actually a very good start to life and I am thankful.