Yes, let's talk about
other ways
(Still I'm interested who really did "Today's experiment". Even only 10% of it...
)
The things that come to my mind are that I sometimes take a completely different view than the other people in a conversation. I'm not doing that to cause arguments, I'm just doing that open people's minds (including my own) or stretch them a bit for a new perspective. Also to see who thinks about it and joins me in trying on a new thought. And I'm not just saying the opposite of what they say, I'm saying something that I recently heard or red and want to explore more.
Last time I did that, was when we were talking about what "true friendship" was and I said, "I think a true friend is not the one who's there when you're sad, but it's the one who sticks with you when you're happy." That was quite a conversation stopper and after a moment they (all) told me that I was wrong and it was the other way round.
It was something I had read in Paolo Coelho's book "The Zahir" and I have to say, looking at my own life, my true friends are the ones who are truly happy for me when I'm happy - regardless of how they feel. It's not the ones who suddenly appear when I'm sad, because they take comfort in the fact that there's someone feeling worse than them.
Also, what I like to do, is to make a point of stopping and giving money to a beggar on the street when my friends are just walking past them and ignoring them. I have to admit that a lot of the time I also walk past. Especially past the one who tells me EVERY DAY: It's my birthday today, can you spare some change?
(But what if one day it really IS his birthday..? Hm... Note to self..)
But I am giving a lot more these days than some years ago, and I remember that I started after a friend had stopped to give and I had just walked on. It made me feel so bad that I started to give money to every beggar who asked me for a few months. OK, I didn't keep that up, but I've done the same thing to my friends ever since
Hopefully they also started giving afterwards, even if it's just once.
Anja
