There is a saying that people come into our lives for “a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” I think I just discovered that someone who I thought was a “lifetime” friend was really more of a “season” friend. It’s possible that I’m wrong on this and it’s just a bump in the road. At the moment, it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like someone who coached me through personal and professional struggles, and I did the same for them, has moved on to another life trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last time we had dinner together, they seemed like a different person. The conversation about the personal and professional struggles had no optimism that there was a viable path forward to happiness in their life. I’ve seen this before. My dad had it. I’ve had it. Sometimes when people have it, they need to change their surroundings and social connections because the pain inside is just too much. And I suppose, sometimes it is necessary to change those because maybe they really don’t fit anymore. For me, I’ve found that the people that I am friends with have transitioned with me between career stages, and I’ve been lucky to have kept a set of people who are important to me around me through these struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Going back to this friend…it’s interesting to watch the transition. As I said, at the recent dinner, it felt like a different friend showed up. And that felt strange because they didn’t think that they were different. Which could have been a sign that their previous life no longer fit them. I’m starting to think that I might be lumped into their “previous life,” and no longer fit them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through our friendship, I learned that this person had several different career stages, and those stages haven’t seemed to mesh well together. When one stage ended, the next stage didn’t necessarily fit well with the last one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, I want to write this up to identify my own feelings around this. This person has been a significant part of my support system and I will be sad if their life takes a trajectory that removes them from that role, and I’m sad because, as I said earlier, I thought that they were a “lifetime” friend. I still think that they might be, but right now they don’t have time for me, and that’s a tough feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, I think that I’m writing this down to get it out of my head so that I can, as the old song goes, “hold on loosely” to this relationship. I’m safe without them as part of my active support system. And they are allowed to take a break from socializing. Which I think is another part of this that’s difficult. I viewed our dinners as more than socializing, and to have it characterized as socializing, rather than support, feels like it makes it less important than I feel that it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Welp, that about wraps it up. I’m hopeful that this is a bump in the road of our friendship, but I realize that people take a variety of paths through life, and we each need to take the path that speaks to our soul. If their path does not include me in the future, I will be sad and disappointed. That being said, I will also be forever grateful for the time when we shared a path together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Best of luck, friend! I hope our paths will cross again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a saying that people come into our lives for “a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” I think I just discovered that someone who I thought was a “lifetime” friend was really more of a “season” friend. It’s possible that I’m wrong on this and it’s just a bump in the road. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemplation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineeringharmony.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}