Write-off

By Jack Chui

Recently, I attended a birthday dinner of a friend who I've only known since the start of this year. I didn't know who would be at the party, but I was somewhat surprised to see a friend who wouldn't have known the birthday girl except for one encounter at my own birthday party...

I turned 30 recently and I'm really proud to have been blessed with so much time thus far. I used to not celebrate my birthday because it was no big deal and its just another day in the calendar - no different to another day. In the last few years though, I've come to realise that its my one opportunity in the year where I have an excuse to gather people together and celebrate a milestone which God has blessed me with.

I usually have several small celebrations where I can organise them for my birthday but being a 'big' one this year that won't ever come around again, a big party was in order to make the most of it. I have small gatherings for birthdays so that 'friendship circles' don't collide (think of the worlds colliding in Seinfeld). I wondered why I wanted to avoid these 'collisions' and I think its mostly because I was worried about what my different groups of friends would think of me because I also hang around with another group of friends. Such a dumb way of thinking --- I wanted to get over this fear by staging a big 30th!

My party went well. There were lots of people crammed into my humble abode and I see it as a great blessing to have so many people that want to come and celebrate with me. When I first came to Melbourne, I didn't know anyone - so much has changed over 5 years. Not all of them were close friends, some were more acquaintances but with enough respect to know that they weren't just there to make up the numbers.

From all reports everyone had a great time. I wouldn't say I had the greatest time because I didn't get to talk at any decent length or depth with anyone - mostly manning the door to welcome and then say goodbye for most of the night. Even so, I knew this would be okay because I threw this party for everyone else, and not really myself. Only I can bring together this set of people in one place as only I will ever have this set of friends. I just wanted to live out my chosenness/belovedness =)

Back to the start of this post, my two friends who I saw at the birthday dinner met each other for the first time at my party and there's a sense of pride that if it wasn't for me, such a possible romantic relationship between the two might not have existed. They were from completely different friendship circles and would not have thought it was possible between the two.

What this made me think of though was the idea of 'not writing people off'. There are certain people I meet which I would consider 'not a great use of time'. They offer no potential advantages or benefits to me and we just don't click so well. But if I 'write-off' these people then I could be missing out on some very fruitful friendships/relationships. Who knows?, through them, I could meet their other friends and my future partner could be one of them. Its easy to see this when I'm 'more' actively searching for a partner and wanting to open more doors than when I was just comfortable with my existing group of friends. It was good to see some fruit in that my two friends can share a more intimate friendship because I did not write either of them off.