The most distinctive difference between strangers and friends are how much you know about them. You may know someone for ten years, but if you don't know anything about that person and he don't know about you either, then you can consider him as a stranger. In contrary, even if you just met someone for one day but you and that person manage to know each other very well, then he or she can be considered as your friend.
For each and everyone of us, we can have one zillion friends but our closest friends will most probably be like only a handful. When you have trouble, real trouble not simple everyday problem, the people who can help you and who most probably will help you are these closest friends. But the thing is, even closest friends become not so close after being separated for a while. You may trust one person very much, but after three years you guys don't meet and he suddenly turn up with a serious request, will you still trust him like before? I doubt that. Another thing is closest friends have their own life to live too, which means they will be there for you all the time. Even if they are willing to fly back from a zillion miles away to rescue you, I doubt whether you will be thick-faced enough to ask them to do that.
For strangers, they don't you and you don't know them, so of course you can't expect them to do some stunts to save you or help you. But if one stranger were to help you when you are in trouble, it means he or she is helping you with a pure heart. Of course this does not include people who help you to gain your money or things. The thing is, when a friend helps you, does he helps because he wants to help you, or because you are his friend? Will he still help you if you were stranger to him? Does he feel that helping a friend is his responsibility or a good deed he would have done to anyone? Try to think about that.
Maybe we can agree that some people are like that. But we must also know that between friends exist several bonds which does not form between strangers, mostly anyway. When you treat a friend bad, or when you refuse to help him on an occasion, what would happen the next time you are in trouble? Of course he's not going to help you, except he's a extremely kind people which is rare. Even if you argue that you help your friend truthfully, you cannot deny your mind will think and compare about how you and your friend treat each other. In there somewhere is the idea of gaining something, which although may only present in a tiny amount but will reduce the true sincerity of our heart.
But when we help someone we do not know, or when a stranger helps us, it's different. Why? Because you do not expect to gain something from a stranger who you meet because of coincidence. You may meet that someone today and never again in the future. Your life will hardly be affected by that stranger again. But yet you help them, or you get help from them. In such cases, the sincerity is even more purer than helping between your friends and you.
One of my friends said that she can confess about her thoughts to a stranger better than a friend. Because a stranger just appear for a brief moment and they go away, so she does not face problem facing them in the future. And when a stranger listen to you, he or she is not listening because they are afraid to offend you. They don't care anyway because you won't be one big piece in their life, you are just one people they meet and leave. When they listen is because they want to and they care.
In short, in life we will always have to face our friends, so it will be a long term relationship with them, at least many times longer compared to the ones we have with strangers. To maintain a relationship includes too many complex things which will clash with our sincerity, like balancing gaining and giving between friends. For strangers whom we may only meet for once in our life, there's no complex element in the short term relationship. We treat them as we wish to, and they treat us like they wish to, filled with sincerity. That's why when they help or they care, the heart behind this action may be much much purer than a friend's.
That's why don't be shocked that at some point in life, you may get deeply touched by a stranger's sincerity. =)
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