Photo taken by the author at
YYC International Airport
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. – Marcel Proust
I have noticed that certain people seem to come into our lives for a specific purpose at a specific time. These people, who become great friends of our’s, tend to enter through circumstances or during a certain season we are going through in life. In other words, they come into our lives for a certain duration of time, and it can be an intense time too, and then all of a sudden their presence is gone. Not forever gone from our life, and certainly not from our memory, but rather for the expanse of time they had once occupied in our life. It seems one moment they are here and the next they are gone.
As King Solomon once said, “There is a season for everything”, and I think this includes the people we encounter in our day-to-day lives, especially those closest to us during any one particular point of our life. As I have come to realize, life is one big season with lots of season’s in between, which present seasonal changes, if you will. After all, this is what season’s bring: change. Whether you love change or despise it, I think we all know by now that in the end change does help us and it is good for us. It’s often the beginning point of a change that can prove to be the most difficult point when a particular kind of change is upon us. But after going through it, whatever it may be, we come to realize that it didn’t seem all that bad. Then, when it’s over we can’t believe what all that fussing was about, and even still, as we look back on this time, perhaps months or years down the road, we are grateful for this rude interruption that was brought upon our life. I believe this is so because in hindsight we can see with greater clarity and clearer understanding of the positive effects that emerged out of this season of change. To put this from a perspective of nature, we entered the change as a caterpillar and emerged as a butterfly.
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Throughout our life we will go through lots of “seasons of friends”. These people, who are often short-term yet very dear friends to us are, what I believe, sent from above to us for that specific period of time. Their purposes are many-fold, including: guidance, encouragement, support, special help and assistance, as well as just someone to be there with us and to offer a listening ear. Then, when the assignment is completed, (our’s as well as their’s, as it is often both ways in a relationship) their company departs and we wait for the next friend(s) to enter. It’s as if our life is a doorway that is always hinging on a proverbial hinge as the door is never fully closed, but just sort of hangs there, swinging open for a new friend to come in or swinging back for that very same friend to go back through again.
Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. — Albert Camus
Dwight Van Middlesworth 