Sometimes I think...most times I don't...but sometimes I do. Lately I've been contemplating the cycles of friendship. I'm guessing the vast majority of people can identify with the situation of leaving your family or friends, or a part of them, for a new adventure in life. We've gone to college, prison, maybe moved for a job, chased a girl across the country...or a dream around the world. You think you can't wait to go home, to see your friends again and get back into that life; however as you've heard; "you can't go home again." It doesn't exist. Your spot with your friends doesn't exist. That life has past, and a new future is the only option. Like all things in this world, friendship is a cycle.
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| Me, Mark, Katie, Amanda (some of the High School gang!) |
We have so many hours a day, and so many minutes to spend in communication with people. Lives change, circles move, and I've seen the struggle to keep connections with people in circles that at the moment just aren't touching - and the cost is that the loss of connection with the circles they are touching. I'm just grateful to have loving friends that I know would welcome me back into their hearts like years hadn't passed. no matter how the dynamic needs to shift.
Perhaps the most telling example of what I'm trying to say with the "touching circles" talk is how we can all be sitting around a dinner table and glued to our phones. We're in a direct circle, 100% - yet we make a choice to engage people outside of that; and we inherently loose the closeness and connection we can develop with those people, around that table in that moment.
That is a micro example of what I'm talking about in macro - years of separation, holding onto the past, and not allowing yourself to engage in the present.
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First team I was honored to manage - and all friends!
Back - Nicole, Brie, Me, Tammy, ?sorry?, Tammy(yes, another one)
Front - Sonja, Julia (Little J), Nancy |
Don't get me wrong. I love my friends, and look forward to seeing each and everyone of them when I see them again. Though I know fully well I've been replaced in their lives - true not in whole, but in function my role is filled. So I make the choice to not engage that role on any sort of active basis, but instead engage my new roles, with people I can affect in a positive way NOW. Some of those people still live 2,000 miles away mind you - but a good many of them are within 2.
Please also understand this isn't so much a statement of miles, but distance in life; needs, goals, plans, behaviors, and of course pizza toppings. I suppose I really don't know what my point is to any of this...maybe just to be a little aware of when you hold on too long and you pass up on the opportunity to invest in the now for something that once was...and could be again...but isn't right now.
I know...clear as mud. Such are the musings of a Meandering Fool.
Now I have to go fulfill a promise to a friend - binge watching Stranger Things here I come!!
