Time always slips away quickly, we graduated from high school and went to different universities of different provinces. We all strongly believe that time and distance never matter as long as we treasure our friendship. And indeed, we still kept in constant contact in university. Every time we had problems, we could always find each other our best listener. Later, we even went to the same city to work, miles away from our hometown, which brought us even closer. As college graduates, we found it never easy to land a job in such a city full of elites and talents. Though our parents spared us from the worries about monetary issues, we still had a tough time there. But for two young girl, it’s not difficult to seek for fun. We can always find ways to entertain ourselves. Memories of those days in life now revive just in front of my eyes.

We meant to work together, but life played trick on us. Her father expected her to work in another province for better job opportunities while my family insisted that I should come back to my hometown. That’s when our path extended toward different direction. Occupied with our work, we seldom have time to contact each other or even meet each other. As a pessimistic person, I might have changed my belief of trusting friendship to doubting it, for most of the time, I did have. Even after I stepped into a much more complicated society and having seen so many friends become estranged by time and distance.

I had lots of friends when I was a student. But several years after I graduated, I am losing most of them. I have to admit that it partly attributes to me. I seldom take initiatives and I am not so extroverted. My mother used to nag me over my bad interpersonal skills. But that’s just part of the story. Soon, I began to realize that when we are students, we have ample time to spend with our friends, most of whom, in fact are our classmates. So we simply and naturally can maintain our friendship well. Lack of common topics never happens among us as we experience almost the same things in life.

But, after we graduate, society shows us a totally different picture. Maintaining friendship becomes far more difficult. I now learn that maintaining friendship requires time, energy and attention. Apart from maintaining friendship, making friends as well turns into a troublesome issue as it is written in the book How to Win Friend and Influence People by Dale Carnegie,” if you want to develop real friendships..... keep this principle in mind -- become genuinely interested in other people.” a sentence which resonates with me. what interests us most is not others or anything in the world but ourselves. Don’t try to get others interested in you, otherwise you will fail, and this is well evidenced by my recent experience.

Several days ago, I was being haunted by some troubles and when I wanted to pour out all those to one of my friends, I failed to hear any responses. I was irritated and disappointed at first, but later I came to know that he doesn’t have that kind of troubles and can never understand that. What’s the point of blaming a person for not understanding your situation? Besides, I also learned that you cannot always rely on your friends to find solutions for you or to comfort you anytime you need. Do not ignore the fact that we have lots of different problems to deal with each day, and we all dedicate most of our time to our own affairs, who cares the snow on your roof while his own doorstep is unclean.