Life Lessons from Daryl 1 - on Burning Bridges

One day, son Daryl went home dejected.  I asked why.  I learned he and a friend got into an argument and he went home not able to patch the difference.  It did not make him feel good.  I got interested and encouraged him to go on with the story.

His friend got irked by a question he had blurted out that started off with "What's wrong with ...?"  The exchange of words resulted into an argument.  Because I know my son very well that he will not throw a question with malice, I told him that there is nothing wrong with asking that question.  But it seemed it was what annoyed the friend.  In the course of his discussing with me the whole story and his points of view, he mentioned that he apologized to his friend.  That kind of solicited a reaction from me because if he believes that he did nothing wrong, why will he apologize? It doesn't sound acceptable to me and I told him you just accepted that you are one who's at fault.

But son Daryl, being a good person that he is, with compassion that emanates from his good heart, said, "You know, Ma, I don't want to burn bridges."  It is an indirect message that he cannot just throw away friendship for simple things like that.  He still gave a chance to his friend to tone down her rage and sort out the issues in her life.  He entertained the thought that there might probably be something more to the temper.

The following day, all things were smooth and he went home with a smile.  Despite the reality that this world cannot be rid of conflict, he was able to do something not to burn bridges.