Oh, how many nervous and unhealthy, unnecessary connections, unnecessary friendships! Where can I escape from this?! Oh, someone, come, break other people's connection and disunity of close souls! Evgeny Yevtushenko These poems and song came to mind today thanks to an article by Svetlana Mezhidova. A good man, but he sees bad in everything. Svetlana raises a very important topic about relationships by obligation. It’s about whether it’s worth spending time and asks, in my opinion, excellent questions. To which I myself, having slightly shifted the emphasis, answered this way: In fact, time has now become such an important resource that it has become a pity to waste it for the sake of “unnecessary connections” , unnecessary friendships." But everyone has their own criteria for distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary friendships: For some, the criterion of necessity is the usefulness of a person. But for me, it’s about how interesting this communication is to me. If for a long time there have been no common topics at all, I’m not interested in just discussing the life of show business stars or some distant former colleague whom I haven’t seen for more than ten years. Many of those older, unwittingly, found themselves in the nineties or early 2000s in an environment that was unusual for them, when they had to survive by trading on the market or doing something similar, because almost all industries were stagnant and few paid wages at which it was possible to live. For example, average salaries in education were then equivalent to the current 10-20 thousand rubles. As many people know, I went into real estate at that moment - I was the owner of a small company and the head of the training department of the largest in St. Petersburg, with 25 branches, but I started as a simple agent, even an intern. I trust you with the keys! Very different people went into real estate back then, both in terms of education level and level of awareness, not to mention ordinary human decency. It’s still interesting to talk to some of those acquaintances, but there’s nothing at all to talk about with others. For example, along with doctors, scientists, and teachers, very poorly educated people also worked in this field. In our real estate agency we had such a generally good woman who “in all seriousness” (not for fun) said “ablacat” instead of lawyer. Yes, this woman is a good person and, in her own way, successful. I wasn’t afraid to work with people instead of becoming, for example, a janitor. She even had HER clients who trusted her for her “simplicity” and “similarity” to them. For this she deserves a certain amount of respect! Is it really necessary to communicate with people when there are no points of contact at all? If a person reacts normally to my laconic “ thank you" or an emoticon in response to the heap of videos endlessly sent by him with "good" songs in the spirit of folk-thieves' chanson, the primitivism of which, sorry, just "turns your heart out" or "jokes" with humor "below the belt" (much lower than in these pictures 😁), and if he tries to call, especially on holidays, while tipsy, in order to talk to an old “friend” “for life”, in my opinion, this is already unnecessary. Oh, is this about my snobbery? 😉What do you think? PS Dear realtors, I'm sorry if I offended you in some way. In fact, I loved that job too and did it honestly, so I never hide my eyes when meeting with former clients, and they still call based on recommendations, and I give the numbers of my former colleagues with whom I maintain relationships. © Family psychologist Natalia Filimonova, 2021. All rights reserved.