Don't be dismayed by goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again after moments or a lifetime is certain for those who are friends. Richard Bach
I thought of an old friend recently. I was in an airport terminal on my way home from half a world away when they popped into my head. I remember them the way they were the last time I saw them...years ago...smiling. They were beautiful, I remembered, surprised that I hadn't thought of it or them in so long...and how I missed them.. I don't think they'd fit into my life now, but reflecting on them made me realize how much I have changed and I wonder, not whether, but how they have changed as well. I parted ways with them because they made some decisions I couldn't agree with-couldn't see my friend making- and didn't want to see the result of that decision making. How could someone so charismatic make such choices? If they could make those kinds of choices, I felt, what chance did I have? I won't say their decisions were bad- that isn't my judgement to make, but certainly they were different from what I would have made. My choices were safer- and now, years later, and thousands of miles apart, who can say which choices were better. They were in my life for a reason- an object lesson as it were. I made my choices and they made theirs and now my friend (still) lives a life that is completely a mystery to me- as is (still) my own. I wanted to imagine as I traveled home that their life is better than I can imagine and that they are happy. And as I traveled through the terminal, a physical embodiment of the paths we travel- our choices and decisions, the brief home of strangers whose paths cross intermittently, but not randomly-this place which made me think of them; as I travel I think of how glad I am that our paths crossed when they did as I follow my own decision and heart and fly away home.
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