Paul's Blog

Cyclists, Friends and Relationships

An odd title for a ‘bitty’ post. But here goes anyway.

Over the past few days I’ve been getting a little angrier than normal. But this time about things I’m allowed to get angry about, like cyclists! I’m not talking about normal, law abiding cyclists (if you can use those words in the same sentence) but the cyclists who run red lights, who flash by pedestrians, who don’t know how to ride their bike on the road!

As a pedestrian, you should feel safe to cross the road at a pelican crossing when the lights are on red without having to keep your eyes on stalks looking for bicycles flashing past in front of you because they’re too lazy to stop. Or even better, at a zebra crossing. For all the drivers out there, when a pedestrian is on a zebra crossing, the cars have to stop. So why don’t cyclists? Why, because they’re pedalling under their own power do they not have to abide by the law? Why shouldn’t they stop for the pedestrian? They’re on the same road as the cars. They have to follow the same laws of the road as the cars. So why are they above the law when it comes to stopping? Simply, why?

Ah-ha friends. Things are getting better. The long late night conversations continue and on very enjoyable subjects. Typically always turning to relationships, ultimately, but this kind of conversation is almost a right of passage to friendship in my eyes. Have the conversation and it’s a case of great friends for some time. On a night like that, it’s complete and open honesty from both sides, which is truly something for both involved and it works immensely in securing a strong friendship. Most of the people reading this will have experienced it at some point with me, and no doubt others, so it’s a refreshingly great slant to be having these conversations with other people too!

And finally, to relationships. I’m hardly a master to speak on such matters, as no doubt anyone reading this can tell. However, thinking I have been doing and I’ve come to some near conclusions. Honesty is the ideal policy, because it’s pointless lying and hiding something from the other person involved – it only hurts both of you even more in such a situation. Complete honesty is a bad plan though, and sometimes concealing things can be beneficial, but it’s not often that this happens, so take the honesty as the default plan, please. Another is don’t make yourself look needy or clingy. These traits just drive the other person away, much to the destruction of the friendship, let alone anything more. Normally these clingy tendencies co-exist with a lack of honesty, so the honesty should remove any such neediness. These seem to be the biggest titbits of advice I’ve picked up over the past week or so, and as you learn how they apply to the real world, they just make sense. Good, hard, logical sense.

It’s good to see people replying. But don’t feel like you need to. This is more a chance to get things out of my system than as something for others to read. Either way, enjoy and talk to you later.

Paul

posted by Paul @ 1:57 AM