Never too late to become someone’s friend

A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allow you to grow. – William Shakespeare

This note is written for my friend, he is in comma since a couple days ago. We missed the high school year to be a friend but we at least become a friend after that. I only can pray for you now. Thank you for being my friend.

In my life I know that so many people have their own impression about me. Some of them didn’t want to be my friends because they had their own opinion about me.

It was funny, how people judged me sometimes. 
 “ Lina, you can bake a cake…. O…  I don’t think you can, because you are not like the one who can cook and bake “ 
Or one of my elementary school was shocked when she knew I became a teacher, “ How come you become a teacher… you were the rebellion student in our catholic school “

I think people build their description about me without understands clearly about my personal life. Sometimes it hurt me personally but I know it is not their mistake, they just knew me from the look.

It was 2005, when my high school friend contacted me about reunion. I was in United State at that time. Unfortunately I couldn’t come to the reunion but they put me on the list with all my email address. Suddenly one day I was invited to the chat. They are all my high school friends but we never talked to each other during the school year.  It was a bit awkward at the beginning because they were actually strangers to me.

One of the chats was like this
“Do you know why I didn’t like to know you when you were in high school?”
“I didn’t know at all”
“Because I didn’t like you base on what people said about you?”
“ Why?”
“ We knew that you had a boyfriend at that time but you were always surrounded with boys. There were many gossip about you ”
“O… Yes at that moment I had a boyfriend but I had my own reason why most of my friends were boys. I have five brothers at home so it is easier for me to hang out with boys because I was more comfortable with them”  
After several chats, he said, “ O… I didn’t know about you. You are actually a good person to be a friend”

The final conclusion was, we didn’t want to be a friend because we already had opinion about someone. The quote from Maryrose Wood is true (The Mysterious Howling), “All books are judged by their covers until they are read.”

However it is never too late to become someone’s good friend as long as we want to learn to accept whom he or she really are.

 Life is short and we never know when it will end, as long as we still have time, we still can become someone’s friends.


**Lina Kartasasmita** Jakarta, July 17, 2014, at 7.53AM



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