LIVE LONG ENOUGH AND...

Live long enough and you start to realize that not everything that happens is important. Some things in life are just that, LIFE. 

What I mean is that we neither love nor hate everything that happens; in fact, some things hardly require anything at all from us and are so routine we scarcely notice them.

Life Lessons are the things we learn from experience. It is hard sometimes to explain to young children that it’s only by living through something that you learn from it. For example, most of us remember our first love. Sometimes it makes us smile to realize how naive we were. However, it is in remembering that we can consider how far we have come and sometimes what we have lost along the way.

I am a great believer in second chances. I give almost everyone I know a second chance. Experience however, has taught me that many, if not most, things do happen for a reason. Drifting apart or splitting up whether involving a friendship or a romance, usually happens for a very good reason.

When things change in a relationship we sometimes need to consider what is happening and why. Whoever initiates the change is likely trying to change something in themselves that they feel has either been missing from their lives or not developed enough to take them where they want to be.

We can’t always think of changes in ourselves or others as a trial or ordeal that we somehow need to tolerate and endure. Sometimes it is not so much a matter of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ but a recognition by you or your friend that your direction in life is diverging.

One of my friends was horrified that I had begun working in the financial sector years ago. She was more artistically inclined and I think she felt people working in the financial sector were too materialistic. She also traveled a lot and I think perhaps that both my career choices and hers eventually meant our paths diverged.

I meanwhile was, and continue to be, appalled by people that base the worth of a person on their financial net worth and/or possessions. To me, what someone is worth would never be based on money or possessions. To me, relationships with people and what type of person someone is, continues to be how I value people.

I have also learned to be more comfortable with accepting that some relationships are situational. This means that when you interact with someone because of a mutual interest or to meet a goal, either personal or relating to your work, there may come a time when one or both of you need to move on to other things separately.

I used to tough it out, particularly in my personal relationships and friendships, because I believed that ‘everything happens for a reason’. I thought that even difficult situations should play out. There was something to be learned here. Possibly.

I think today I spend less time hanging around until the bitter end. I think that something I might have had to learn along the way instead has been when to say goodbye. By accepting that just because some people pass by us in life, it doesn’t mean that we need to expect more of a situation than a brief meeting and a passing glance.

I still feel that things happen for a reason. I feel happy to think that I still can feel comfort and reassurance in feeling that ‘no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should’ as the Desiderata poem told us.

Today, I give new experiences more of a chance to come into my life by leaving some room for them.

The past is after all, The Past. I can’t do much to change what already happened, except to take the lessons I learned from it with me as I move forward into the Future.

I find there is quite a lot of living to do right now, in The Present, to keep most of us pretty busy, without spinning our wheels and going over the same old story. This is especially important when we consider that just ahead of us, the rest of our life awaits us.