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| Who will be there? |
I found myself in such a situation, when my then boyfriend, now fiance's grandfather passed a few years back. I sat with the family, looped in a solemn horseshoe formation around the casket as people paid their last respects.
As I watched everyone pass, I couldn't help but feel suddenly, overwhelmingly out of place. Here I was, only having known the man for the past five years, yet I was front and center for the last moments of his time above ground.
I wanted to be there, wanted to support my boyfriend, but I wondered, was this who he expected to be left standing when he died? Would he be disappointed with this turnout? Did I even deserve to be here?
In 70 plus years of life, just think of all the people he'd known. From his first friends in grade school, to high school, his first job, former girlfriends, bosses, people he'd met doing sports, the list goes on and on and on.
And at the very end, here was me and a few other people. And this is who and what it'd all come down to.
That got me thinking about how sad and how scary it is, that we can all count on one hand the people who TRULY care about us. We go through people in our lives like we do coffee filters, and the time we take to brew each relationship before we change that filter, seems to be getting increasingly shorter.
How many people have you lost? No I don't mean they died, I mean simply "lost touch" with? Not because you wanted to or should have (that's a whole different story) but simply because you nor they could be bothered to continue to hold the relationship together? Your best friend in elementary school, do you still talk? Your college roommate? The person you met in zumba class and went to dinner with a few times?
Our relationships these days seem like a revolving door. We meet because we have something in common, be it work, hobbies, classes, mutual friends, whatever. We talk, we bond, we hang out, and then slowly, slowly, we talk less. We stop hanging out. Someone moves. Lives change. And soon we don't talk anymore at all. All those little things we told each other no longer even matter. We didn't mean enough to each other to withstand the heavy pull of life.
And I have to admit, sometimes it breaks my heart.
How many times have we become close to someone for a time, telling them every detail of our day to day lives, only to have it fade away as though we'd barely met at all?
Perhaps this is a natural part of life, and we're only meant to know some people for a very short time. They might come into our lives to help us with a problem or solve an issue, and for nothing more. But sometimes, maybe it would be nice to forge more friendships that would last until the end of our lives.
Not fancy, hang out every second friendships, but friendships that you could pick up right where you left off, friends that will be there for you no matter what happens friends that love you. We all have a few like that. Why cant we have more?
Relationships, like everything worth having in life, take work. We seem to want to do less and less work. It's easier to simply stop working to be a good friend and find someone else that fits our current needs. People and things change, and its easier to go out and find replacements than to work on what we already have, and add to it.
I'm guilty of holding onto strings better left to fray. When I befriend someone I try to give it my all, but I can say the only people who haven't let me down are a couple of my girls and my fiance. Probably good that I'm marrying him then!! ;)
Everyone else turns out to be somewhat of a letdown, They stop talking to me suddenly or slowly, they fade away without reason, they lose interest in working for a friendship. It makes me sad. But I know that I am not alone. I see it happen everywhere, with everyone. I'm sure I'm guilty of being the letdown at least once, too.
Naturally, that's made me less sensitive to people that talk to me. "New friends" if you will. I am always happy to get to know people but I don't expect much to come of it. I don't expect them to remember me when I'm 75, or 45, or in many cases, 30.
What does this teach us? To always embrace ourselves and our independence. The things that keep me happy I've learned to find within myself, my design, my work, my goals. Fitness. My dogs. People are additions to your life, and shouldn't ever become your reason to exist, or your motivation to go for those things you want for yourself.
Perhaps you must let them fall in and out of your life, maybe that's how its supposed to be. Perhaps life is meant to be lived meeting, loving and losing as many friends as we can.
That doesn't mean it isn't sad when we realize someone we used to (or still do) care about has stopped talking to us slowly. That doesn't make it any easier when we leave a job and we never see the person we spent day in and day out with, ever again.
What if it didn't have to be that way? What if we put a little more effort into telling the people that we want in our lives, that we want them there? Or better yet, showing them. What would we have to lose? I'm not talking about horrible exes, or mean bosses, or former friends who turned into something we don't even want to know anymore.
No I'm talking about those silent faders, where nothing ever went wrong, nothing really changed, but the friendship ended because no one put in the effort. Those are the saddest losses, those are the ones that make us wonder if anyone truly cares about us at all.
So...... go out there, weather it be in your personal life or your business life, and send an old friend a message. Meet up. Tell your current friends they mean something, and don't allow them to fade without any negative reason for doing so. Cut people slack. Forgive minor imperfections and offenses.
Put in some damn effort. Just like you should with your professional life, your spouse, your kids your health and your pets. Put in some effort and care a little bit.
Someday that's gonna be you. Laying in that coffin. When all is said and done who is going to be there to remember you and what you meant in your time here? Assuming they haven't passed before you of course, who will be able to say they really knew you through a big portion of this thing called life?
Who will you support throughout this life, who do you want there. There's never a wrong time to remind them of that. Remind them now. Before the sad music and the weird clothes and the coffin thing.
Before its too late.
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