Friendships & Destiny (August 2010)

From august 14, 2010

Growing up, I attended 3 different gradeschools, 2 junior high schools and 2 high schools.  I never stayed in one place long enough to call any town a hometown.  It always seemed as though I would finally make friends and then we'd be off to another new city someplace far away.  It was usually very hard for me to leave my new-found friends and start over in a new place where nobody knew me.  We would always exchange addresses and promise to write -- and then I would think to myself that I was never going to talk to that friend again.

If there is one thing I learned from moving, it was to hold on to those friends!  I realized at a very young age that I didn't have to lose my friends just because I moved into a new town and another new school.  I wrote to my friends and kept in touch.  With each new move, I added to my list of "away friends" and the only friends I ever lost were the ones who didn't write back.

Modern technology has enabled me to reconnect with old friends in a new way.  No more waiting for letters to travel long distances.  I can send a message to a friend I have known all my life and receive a response almost instantaneously.  I love this new technology!  Not only has it allowed me to maintain old friendships, it has also allowed me to make new friendships that otherwise may never have developed. 

I have always believed that things happen for a reason.  Sometimes we can't see the reason until it is many years in the past.  The successes and failures we encounter throughout life become part of our being.  They create the very person we have become.  The beauty lies in the reality that the story is never finished.  The persona we have created through all our different choices in life never stops changing and evolving.  There will always be a new opportunity for a new page, or a new chapter in our story.

I am so glad that I’m part of the generation in which I am able to use modern technology to reconnect with and make new friends.  This is destiny, and it has opened up a new chapter in my life, which I am thoroughly enjoying.  Maybe some things were just meant to happen in the big scheme of things after all.

Drinking Horse Mountain, Bozeman, Montana