To share or not to share?

To old friends.

At this point in my life, getting to know people and making friends with them is such a pain. And it's getting harder as I get older. Things happen in life every day, every hour, every other minute that adds to who I am, changes what I think, makes me feel the way I do. After about two decades-worth of this, I'm at the point where I am, who I am. But even while I think and write this, there are things that are changing. A sort of constant evolution, if I may. Terming this as death and rebirth might be a tad bit too dramatic. Now, what does this have to do with making friends? So if I'm constantly changing who do I portray myself as to someone I met thirty seconds ago? I never know. I am confused and hence caught between wanting to overshare and under-share.

Undersharing is the smart way to go, I think erring on the side of too-little is better than the other. I might appear 'mysterious' and/or 'enigmatic' and/or 'thoughtful', all of which are arguably positives - not to mention extremely interesting things to be. Oversharing though, is a completely different ballpark. There's absolutely no coming back from telling a potential friend about say, family drama or about the functioning of some part of your intestine - the lower part, specifically. Or even saying something dumb by mistake. These can completely change what the other person thinks about you, and damage control is nonexistent in this situation. You have changed into someone else forever. Sometimes this happens with people you've known a while as well. I think this makes it easier to realize who actually knew you, took the time and the care to get to know you and who created some sort of idealized version of you in their heads.

Old friends are an entirely different matter though. They're how people should ideally connect. They know entirely too much about you, too many embarrassing stories and have seen too much for one more instance-of-dumbness to change anything. They don't bat an eye when you forget to look both sides before crossing the road or change your moral perspective about something - they love some essence of you that exists beyond the change, beyond the evolution. Or rather, the essence that makes you evolve.