Friends, the Family We Choose for Ourselves

“Friends are the family we choose for ourselves”. If this is the case how come some of them stay and some of them go? How come we’re close to a friend and then one day something happens, which we may not totally understand, that changes that friendship forever?

I like to think of life as a train made up of different wagons. Puffing and churning as it travels up mountains, down hills, through forests and cities until it finds its way home.

One of its wagons is the ‘Friends’ wagon. Some friends are with us from the beginning of our journey and they accompany us throughout. Some friends we pick up at different stops, the city, the mountains or the forest, they ride along until one day they get to a stop that seems attractive to them and they decide to get off.

The reality is, along the journey of that train, no one remains the same. At each stop, new lessons are learned, perspectives are renewed, and new experiences are gained that help us mature and grow. They make us contemplate why some people are in our lives and we may find that the reasons that made us cling to them in the past no longer apply to this leg of our journey. As a result, some of the friends we’ve made along the way can no longer be with us on this journey. For different reasons we grow apart and we take different routes.

Our journeys diverge; our role in their lives is complete as well as their role in ours. In this new phase, even if it’s sometimes hard to admit and even harder to understand, it is time to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new: new friends, new ways and a new perspectives.

“New” is exciting, it’s fresh, adventurous and fun. “New” is different, it might be scary because we don’t know what it has in store for us but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad. We just tend to see it this way.  Different might be perceived as harmful because we’re only human after all, and we love our comfort zones. Friends make up a big part of this comfort; take the comfort away and you’re only left with emptiness and fear. We find ourselves in a strange land that we don’t know and we are not sure how to deal with it.

To overcome the fear and the uncertainty, our egos decide to step in. They take control of the train and steer it in the “I” direction. Our egos don’t take rejection well. The moment a friend decides to leave our train or we decide to leave theirs, we automatically assume that we’re better than them, we’re better off or they don’t know what they’re missing. Our egos push us to focus on ourselves so much, on our needs, wants and regrets that we forget to make room for the new and welcome it.

Acceptance and non-attachment are the keys to taming the ego.  Our friends are an outward reflection of our inner journey. If we don’t get attached to the results of our friendships and have no expectations, it will be easier for us to go with the flow and just accept it when someone leaves our friendship wagon. Bid them farewell with a smile and rest in the fact that we were able to contribute many lessons to their journey just like they contributed to ours.