When a group of friends are together, when will you feel that everyone has matured? It's not because the content of the topic has changed from academics to careers, or because everyone is getting earlier and healthier the schedule, but the party is no longer just noisy.
When I was a student, everyone chatted like a vegetable market, you and I said a word, competing with each other to express their opinions. If someone is in a bad mood and hasn't finished speaking, someone will immediately come up with an idea to encourage their friends. But as everyone has started to mature, we've had more moments of awkward silence in our gatherings.
When I was a student, I liked to be lively at every event. If you attend a party and there is a cold or quiet moment, you will always feel very embarrassed, and after the event, you will also leave a not very good impression of the event. But as I got older, I realized that whether it is a small gathering with girlfriends or a group of old friends, the moment of silence or a little cold scene is the charm of everyone's maturity.
Some time ago, because of the end of the epidemic, my college friends and I finally got together again after three years. At this meeting, everyone reported to each other what had happened during this time.
One of them had a friend who had suffered a great change in his family, but he probably thought about not letting the atmosphere become stiff, so he told everyone with a relaxed tone and a smile. After hearing this, everyone was silent for a while. After a while, one or two friends began to take the initiative to comfort the friend, and the others listened quietly.
Such a scenario would have been almost impossible in the past.
In the past, whenever this happened, people were always embarrassed. Sometimes, in order to avoid facing these emotions directly, some people will take out their mobile phones and pretend to be busy, but this time, friends naturally face such a situation with each other. Soon after, waiting for our friend's emotions to pass, we started a new round of chatting.
This experience made me change my understanding of awkward silence in the past, and it turned out that the chat blank that I was most afraid of before can actually be a heart-warming moment.
For those present, I believe that it is not that they no longer care about this friend's situation, nor do they not know how to answer because of disappointment or embarrassment, but that they leave a space for this friend, and if he is not willing to talk further, we also respect his boundaries.
In the past, in the social situations of friends, I was anxious to show my enthusiasm and how easy it was to get along with, for fear of being misunderstood as a person who is not good at chatting or introverted, or thought to be angry.
However, after a few quiet and gentle awkward silences with my friends, I realized that sometimes no amount of enthusiasm can be compared, leaving some time and space for friends to listen to what they really want to share.