Lots of things go into molding a person and each day adds more new things. Learning something new every day is very easy for me since I seem to have so much to learn, and the more I learn the more I see I have to learn. I am not ever bored though either :)
Listening to all types of people and how they interact with me has taught me volumes about myself. Each person, because of their uniqueness, sees a different facet of me, a diamond with smooth and rough sides. Some see a rough side, but if I listen to their criticisms, I might just be able to polish that facet for the next person who views it. My value and my self-esteem has improved as I realize that those "negative" people have little influence on how I feel about myself, but I should use their views though to improve upon myself. Positive friends add to my life and hopefully help me build upon my better qualities and also bring to better focus for improvement the poorer qualities. Friends are good to have, but I am the rudder that steers my self-esteem heading, and realizing this allows me also the ability to love myself no matter how I might be treated any particular day. Not that friends or mean people do not affect me in some way, they do. But do they throw me off course or out of focus? Not like they used to as I now use the grit to polish myself, a diamond in the making, more and more :)
Friends have taught me about unconditional love. For me this has been really hard to understand since we all have certain expectations and desires from any type of friendship. But when a real close female friend turned on me and tuned me out for no reason, instead of ever getting defensive as I might have in the past, I became totally supportive. Instead of losing her for good, she has opened herself up to me more. We are good friends once again and we remain exchanging e-mails and sharing with each other about life. This was the hardest thing in relationships I have ever had to overcome. It was worse than dealing with a youth wanting to commit suicide once. That was over in a week (no, he did not commit suicide and has developed into a fine adult), this took a lot more time and used more loving qualities of friendship values I ever had to develop. But after many months, what a warm and life-changing development for me. We live, we grow, as long as we care. I do care.
I have also learned that women want men to know them, but as ironic and contradictory this may sound, if we ask them what they want we do not get the fact and figure type answers we can relate to. So for many years I have been reading Cosmopolitan (goofiest women's mag I could relate to). The mag always states how women should be clearly stating their desires but somehow I have not met many of these women I guess. Or perhaps more men than women are actually reading Cosmo? Or maybe we are just looking at the pictures? It appears to me that men are to know women by the "hints". I also found it quite interesting to discover that women are more interested if they do not know much about the man or are able to figure a guy out. Any female want to help polish and straighten this confused male?