15 Jul Reason, Season, Lifetime
One of my favourite phrases is “People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” I believe this to be true of all the people we meet throughout our lives. Everyone somehow, connects with and touches us in a unique way.
In the different stages of our lives we meet people who help us through one, or even more, of our developmental stages. These stages obviously include our childhood, our years of education, the years we spread our wings and leave the homely nest on our charge for independence, the years in which we meet our mate and/or decide to share our DNA with another and procreate, the years of love and heartache as we try to manoeuvre our way through the ups and downs of parenthood without a manual, and then into the autumnal years where we may find ourselves being the parent to our own parents when they are no longer able to make the important decisions in their lives.
Often those with a ‘reason’ to be in our lives may be there just to help us at a specific hurdle, event or time when we need guidance from someone who has knowledge about, and experience in, that particular matter. It may be based on a medical, educational, religious, sporting or social reason, and that person is a specialist in that field: a doctor, a teacher, a priest, a coach or a friend or colleague. Time in this stage may be from as little as a day, through to a week, a month or even a year, until that situation in which their support was needed, passes. They may be forgotten in a blink of an eye, or occasionally remembered when something jogs a memory from that time. Their names may escape us, and their faces be blurred, or they could just have been a voice of someone we knew but had never met. Whatever the reason, they were important to some part of our being as some time.
Those who come into our lives for a ‘season’ are usually there for a longer period of time. They hold an importance that is unparalleled with anyone else. Their unique relationship is very important to us at that time in our lives, and quite often is a guiding factor in the development of our personality, or the way we view the world at that time. It could be a romantic relationship which didn’t quite make the ‘happy ever after’. Or it could be a special friendship at a time when you needed that person, or maybe they needed you, then for some reason you part ways. The memory of them will live on inside you, for they do hold a place in your heart. And when you think of them you smile. Sometimes you may even try to reconnect later through the power of social media, though I often find there is not the intensity of the relationship that there once was.
Personally, I’m a fan of the ‘lifetime’ people. Hopefully it does include family members, though this is sadly not the case for everyone. And if that is to be, maybe it is the family we choose for ourselves; those special friends who are considered ‘sisters of the heart’ or ‘brothers in arms’. You know you would die for them, if the need arose and you were able to. These people may include those we have grown up with, childhood friends who have endured with us the rocky path of life. They may also be those we have met through our occupations and, no matter how many times our career path has changed, they have been there with us on that journey. We also meet people through our children; often uniting as parents when our ‘little people’ start school, join a sporting team, or even just meet at the local park while we try to run the energy out of them before bed. Wherever or however we meet, it is meant to be. It is inevitable as we are two sides to a coin. And not just for a reason or a season. We will be entwined together, forever. And how fantastic is that? To have someone you an call on 24/7 whether you need help, or better still, when you need to celebrate. Someone who will have your back, as you have theirs. Just dial 1800FRIEND and they will be there.
And I am thinking now, as I write my next book, of some very special lifetime friends. I’m teasing out their traits and personalities, and spinning them together to build the main character so they will live on forever, immortalised in the written word, for others to enjoy as much as I have, am doing and (hopefully) will continue to do so, for a very long time yet.
Here’s to a lifetime, and many more 🙂
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