Does your person have… blue eyes?
Does your person wear… a hat?
Is your person… bald?
If you have ever played “Guess Who?” as a kid, you’ll know that in order to win the game, you have to figure out your opponent’s character card first.
If you haven’t played before, here’s a quick synopsis. Each person gets a foldable, standing tile playing board and picks a unique character personality card, and their opponent tries to determine which person the other player secretly holds. When one player guesses a trait your mystery card possesses, then the other player gets to eliminate the characters with or without that particular trait, depending on the answer. For instance, if the question “Does your person wear glasses?” is answered in the affirmative, then the player asking the question can eliminate all the characters that do not have glasses. Eventually, a winner will be made by whomever has one character tile remaining — providing it’s a correct match.
I compare this game to the people we meet and encounter on a daily basis.
When making friends, deciding with whom we want to share a piece of our life, we qualify them pretty much the same way. We meet new people, and we start to ask them certain questions to get to know them better and to see if they will fit in or be considered as a “quality” friend.
Do you like… pizza?
Do you listen to… hip hop?
Do you like to… jog?
We ask these kinds of questions to get to know people better — to see what interests we have in common, expand our own hobbies, and get to truly “know” someone. If they start to answer completely opposite of what you would find permissible in a friend, you may start folding over “tiles” and distancing yourself from them if they don’t really fit in the framework of your next BFF. The character traits just don’t match.
But the questions aren’t always so clear. There are obviously some differing interests, such as favorite colors, that aren’t worth severing a potential friendship over. However, with time, we may realize someone has a personality trait that we just can’t accept in someone call our “friend.” We learn this over time through experiences and conversations with people we meet. If someone turns out to be a liar, a thief, or possesses an aggressively violent temper, we may say these are “deal breakers” and reasons for us to “fold tiles” and move on. They may just not blend with our standards. Clearly, not a match.
As you figure out what you are willing to accept and what you choose to reject, you can make better friendships and improve the quality of people you surround yourself with in life. We’re always taking an inventory of our friends, but every little nuisance is certainly no reason to fold over a tile. (We’d be out of cards to pick pretty fast…)
As our personal life experiences expand and our choices and decisions lead us in different directions and down our chosen paths, we may not necessarily fold the tile over, but instead let it stand. They may bring character to our lives and be a pleasant part of the journey. The better you get at observing behaviors and asking questions that more closely reveal a person’s character card, the more positive matches you’ll make to complement your life as you try to “Guess Who?” gets to remain standing next to you.