Six years ago, I worked for a company that focused on the importance of building lasting business relationships. During my tenure, much of the training revolved around theories similar to Dale Carnegie’s book, “How To Win Friends And Influence People”.
It was not uncommon for my boss to meander throughout the office reminding the staff to be aware of relationship arrogance — a term used to describe the superficial reasons we prevent, or encourage new friendships.
To this day, those words still linger at every networking meeting I attend: “Beware of relationship arrogance.” I’ve never forgotten it.
So, it’s no surprise that this topic came up during a conversation with a friend.
“People are only friendly when they want something out of you.”
Reluctant to agree with him, I could see his point. We’ve all experienced a run-in with a moocher or two.
“What happened to being nice, just to be nice?”
That spawned a long discussion of how relationships are formed: learning about a person from the inside out.
Society would have us believe the inverse; it’s because of what we think we know about them that we should want to befriend them — or not.
The wonderful thing about friendships are the unexpected gems we receive just by being a friend. Friends help us in many ways we would never imagine.
I mean, who would have thought that a guy I became friends with riding the bus in New York would have box seats for the Utah Jazz, and invite me to go to a game?
There are people we’ve been friends with for years and we find out new things about them all the time. There are so many people we become friends with, and later find out they can help us in ways we never knew possible.
That’s the beauty of friendship.
So, if Forrest Gump doesn’t mind, “(Friends are) like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get” — unless you befriend them.
The next time you’re about to walk out on an opportunity to be a friend, or you catch yourself saying, “I need to be friends with that person because …” Stop. Reset. Be a friend, just to be a friend.