Quid pro quo

"I'd fight a bear for you. Not a grizzly. Or a brown bear. Or a panda. But maybe like a care bear? I'd fight one of those sonsabitches for you."

People are usually really good at math and economics when it comes to relationships: they invest a certain amount of time and energy waiting to get the same in return. It is logical, straight forward and simple. But, somehow, this seldom turns out to be the case, as we get less then we'd hoped for or not in the way we expected it to. And then we blame the other person, our feelings get hurt or we lose friends. My question is: should there be an equality sign in that equation? Should we get the same that we invested?

One of the most common mistake of mine is that I do make relationships an equation, I give all and expect people to do the same. As I got older and not necessarily wiser, I ended up thinking this wasn't fair: just because I am a perfectionist not everybody has to be one, a perfect friend, a perfect colleague or a perfect girlfriend. Slowly I am giving up on my idea of perfect people and trying to find out what are the flaws that I can accept and live with, and be as up front about them as possible. 

Looking as objectively as possible, I understood that I am capable of giving more in any kind of relationship than the average person, and this is not as good a thing as it seems, as I give it expecting something in return. So I am changing, because progress is more important than perfection, or at least this is what wise people say. As the last few months show, I can get to care about people without expecting anything in return, because I started accepting them for who they really are: grizzly, brown bear, panda or care bear, aka sonsabitches. How crazy is it that you can care for sonsabitches and accept them as they are: their only use being the ability to make people laugh? 

I am blessed with friends I can laugh with at crazy stories about care bears, people with whom I can't even count who invested what, for how long or how much. And these are the people worth keeping, fight the grizzlies for. The rest are just entertainment and background noise, but the laughs are priceless! And once in a while I get to meet someone, who will prove me right, that people are worth investing and fighting for, and how great is that?