Missing people

Isn't it funny how people who are so important for a time in your life just fall away from you?  Today I'm missing all those people who I was close to because of an interest our children shared.  You know the ones.  The ones you have lunch with because of the PTA.  The ones who find out about the latest trauma in your life because you spend so much time with them.  Then nothing.

What I wonder is if you can hang on to everyone.  Does the entire world have this falling away problem or is it me?  Could I be more forceful about hanging on?  And really should I be?

This inevitably for me leads to Christmas cards.  What you didn't make that jump?  I always think I should expand my Christmas card list to include all these people I never see anymore. But I'm not convinced that I get the same feeling from sending or reading cards.  I'm not sure I'm really still in touch with these people.

Maybe these people really only serve a purpose in your life for short periods of time.  And I don't mean that in any karma or fate way.  I mean that when you no longer share the thing that brought you together in the first place, maybe you don't have anything much else in common.  There must be room in our lives for short term relationships that are fulfilling, but not meant for the long haul.

I think that idea is counter to what most people believe.  I think we need to hang on to people and things in a desperate attempt to make change disappear from our lives.  If all the people around me and the things around me never change, I never change and therefore have a say in my life.  It's the illusion of control.  And it is an illusion.  You are not in control.

But it's still bittersweet for me to think about some of the really neat people I've encountered over the years.  It's good to know in the midst of winter that those people are out there, being as supportive and warm as I remember them.  I know they are enriching someone else's life just as they did mine.

Yippy skippy--it's snowing again.