Underneath the Exterior

It's so true, you cannot judge a book by it's cover. People can be soooo different in reality from how they appear on the outside. This was brought home to me again this week. There's this girl who works in my department at work. I see her everyday but we have never exchanged a word. She never smiles, never socialises with the rest of the department, always takes her lunch alone and leaves the office without saying goodbye to anyone. She has been with the company for a year but no one knew much about her.

But yesterday I met this girl in the kitchen and we started talking. After lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon sending emails to each other and I learnt so much about her. Turns out that she is a nice person and she is funny too! And she has led a very interesting life, she can speak 6 languages including Arabic, German and French. She's also thinking of leaving the company to set up her own business. I think I've made a cool friend. Today she even came to my desk to have a chat, and we emailed each other again. It just goes to show that there is usually more to people than meets the eye initially.

On a completely different note - I have a question: Would you tell your good friend that her fiance was cheating on her? Even as you watch her happily plan the wedding? Hmmm.... tough one. A friend of mine said she attended the wedding of her good friend recently. Everyone (including my friend, her mum, and many of the bride's friends) knew the groom had been sleeping with another girl. But nobody wanted to tell the unfortunate bride because they didn't want to be the bearer of bad news. Who knows how the bride would react if she had been told? The worst part of the story was that the girl the groom was cheating with was also invited to the wedding, and she boldly went to congratulate to couple and give the bride a hug! My friend called it "the hug of death". I accused her of not telling the bride about the sorry state of affairs long before the wedding day. Her defence was that the bride probably knew but deliberately chose to ignore it because she was desperate to hang onto the guy. Ah! God help all of us.

Secretly though, I wondered if I would have the courage to tell the bride if I knew her. Would I risk my neck and our friendship or watch my friend get married to someone who would never be faithful to her (no point hoping he will change after marriage)? I can't answer that question. I think I would prefer not to know. At least then I won't have that responsibility.