Image by Flickr photographer: WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot
All of my life my father has said to me, “Jeannie, friends will come and go throughout your life.” I always hated that idea. As someone who has always been a fiercely loyal friend, I’ve always felt adamant that if someone was a good friend, they should stay in your life forever. Well, if you’ve lived any amount of years into adulthood, then you can imagine that I’ve lived through a lot of disappointment in my life: Because of course as my dad predicted, many friends have come and gone.
Sometimes people simply drift apart, other times friendships go down in flames, and still other times one person will continue to make the effort, while the other seems to stop caring. I’ve experienced all of these scenarios more times than I care to count. And for some reason it always seemed to affect me more than it did most other people. In fact, I remember the very first friend who “left” my life. I was only 10 years old and she had been my best friend throughout my childhood. We were always at each other’s houses, we would spend hours playing in the woods, doing silly and adventurous childhood things. And then one year we ended up in different classes, and suddenly our circles and in turn our friendship changed. We drifted out of each other’s lives and I was devastated. I have vivid memories of sitting in my mother’s office crying endlessly as I listened to depressing Phil Collins’ songs. Ok, so I was a bit melodramatic even as a kid, but I was heart-broken.
Now I’m 25 years older and I’d like to say I’ve gained a bit of wisdom. As years have passed and I can look back on my prior experiences, I now have the perspective of being able to see that each one of those instances happened for a reason. In each scenario, I was growing and changing, and so was the other person. And in many of those cases we were simply growing apart, in different directions. We were walking down different paths. And I’ve now learned that each time someone I cared about left my life, it was happening to make space for someone new that was to enter my life; someone who was more aligned with the path I was currently on.
This lesson has culminated for me more than ever in the past few years. Having gone through my “awakening” of sorts, it has completely changed me. I have a different perspective on life and the universe in which we live, I have had experiences that have confirmed the immortality of my soul, and I have learned how to access higher levels of my consciousness. This has been a unique and life-altering experience to which I find that many people cannot relate, and it has been difficult and frustrating trying to explain it to friends that I’ve known for years. And as has always been the case throughout my life, some friends have fallen away. But they have made room for others and more than ever, I find myself meeting person after person who has gone through similar experiences. Synchronicity happens left and right and “magically” seems to bring the right people into my experience, and I suddenly find myself surrounded by friends who are on this same path. I’ve even seen the return of old friends who left my life long ago, and we unexpectedly find ourselves back on the same path, after a long detour. You know that friend I was crying about when I was 10 years old? She is one of those friends.
So what’s the moral of this story? My dad was right, people will come and go. And yes, it will be sad, even heart-breaking at times. But you can trust that it’s for a reason. It’s to allow yourselves to grow and expand in different directions and to make room for new people to come in to support you along your current path. So if you find yourself facing a situation where you are losing a friend, although it may be hard, let them go with love. Then open your heart to the new people who will come into your life to support you; and you never know, they may just come back.
This post is dedicated to Jessie.
The Awakened Life 