From the sidelines

There’s a sequence in the film Valentine’s Day where Reed, having been left by his girlfriend, discovers none of his friends thought they were a good match in the first place. Enraged, he says to his best friend, “Apparently everyone and their mother felt that way but nobody had the guts to tell me!”

Reed and his best friend Julia in Valentine’s Day
(Photo by Ron Batzdorff © MMIX New Line Productions, Inc.)

There are certain people in life I like to think of as being like soap opera viewers: they know all of the characters, but they’re not involved in the plot. These people vary depending on the situation, but they are the ones we can turn to when others are too involved to see it objectively.

Several such friends gave me the same advice about a certain situation recently, advice I was reluctant to take. It seemed easy for them to offer it, for the same reason that they were the first ones to see it – they were not involved in the plot. But when I eventually saw that they were right, I realised that other more plot-involved friends agreed with them. My reaction was similar to Reed’s: why did nobody ever tell me?

So I suppose the moral of the story is this: if you’re the soap-watcher on a friend’s life and you find yourself shouting warnings at the screen, do them a favour and gently tell them. They probably need to hear it, even if they may not be able to see it yet.