How I and my best friend stopped saying sorry!

The Beginning:

Jota and I became friends at a bar not too long ago, almost a year ago….. I meet him at the time of my life when things were not going so well. Because of that my level of willingness to make new friendships was extremely low and we went off-grid with each other right the way. It seemed like one of those people you meet follow on Instagram and just never expect to run into again. Then, one day I went downstairs to the neighbourhood bar, the Bird House… I had been expending quite some time there the last couple months and it was just the instinct of a 24 yr old to go hang there either after work or to meet up with friends. That's when I saw him again, there was that guy that I saw in my Instagram now in person with a red bicycle. We smoked cigarettes and talked for a while about theatre, film festivals and projects that we were both working on and realized we were neighbours and that's when I believe the whole adventure started…. the Lighter hoarder and the girl that loses her keys and phone frequently became …friends.

The middle

After various adventures to the park, bars, grocery stores, karaoke nights long talks and hangouts with friends, Jota one day got fed up with the number of times a day I apologized, I am sorry was almost punctuation to everything I said and now he had caught himself doing the same so while hanging out at my home balcony he looked at me and said

Tefa what if instead of saying sorry we start saying Thank you

I was caught by surprise and could not understand the concept of not apologizing, I understood that I constantly used the word but could not conceptualize the harm it did to me every time I used it. And that was the moment where Jota and I became best friends. The person right in front of me had taken an active steep on changing the programming that I had been configured within a simple and practical way.

The end

The best part of all of it was that our friendship grew stronger because we held each other accountable at changing sorry for thank you and sharing the concept with every single person that came across our paths. Everyone tries to act like relationships, friendships and human interactions have become so extremely complicated but they are not. We just have so much information at our hands that its difficult to separate the good from the bad, the factual from the biased. But as a story has a formula so do the relationships we create and Jota will forever be my best friend because he taught me the putting Positive at the beginning of that equation will always bring a better result.

So tomorrow when you find yourself Apologizing for being late, Say thank you for your patience and waiting for me. Instead of apologizing for what you said earlier thank the person for giving you the chance to make things better. Do yourself and those around you a favour and turn the negative into a positive and move your day and relationships on that note!