In between

Why is it that people come into your life only to leave you hanging....

Is it insecurity....a lack of confidence...do they think you might interpret it to mean something that it doesn't if they stay....

Are they just too busy?

I have a friend....maybe, once or twice a year we come into each other's life.....the conversation is great, we go back and forth sharing ideas, opinions, beliefs.....then bam! Nothing again for another few months.

I use to have a best friend....we did everything together. We were like sisters, really.....but I was the one who always had to initiate things.....if I didn't call, we could go for weeks without speaking. I quit calling, and we haven't seen each other since.

Does it make people feel vulnerable to stick around? Is it fear that keeps them away.....fear of commitment to a time consuming friendship? The messes, the worries..do they make us afraid and confused...do we want to quit, or rewind or start fresh...

Sometimes, we don't stick with things long enough to see how they all fit together....is there some lesson to be learned that we can only learn from them? Do we need them, or do they need us?

Life is full of introductions and goodbyes. It's the people that fall in-between that perplex me....the ones that are the first to say after an absence of several months...."it feels like we've never been apart...."well we have been apart, and who knows how much richer our life could have been if we'd stayed close.

So how do we do this?

John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when we are making other plans.”

I guess we miss out on a lot in life. That’s the cost. We miss out on the gorgeous, textured beauty of a life filled with friends.... stains and all.

Sure it takes time and committment and lots of energy on this side but what if we miss the possibility of a gorgeous, deep, rich filled life on the other side.

Maybe we need to spend more time on the in-between.

Leaving Home

Where ever life takes us...we seldom get too far from home

How we felt as children never leaves us. How we are thought of us children is hard to escape.

You could be 60 and as long as you were the baby of the family, you're still the baby.You could be an accomplished career person and still be haunted by not finishing that college degree.You could have a beautiful home, family and career and still feel that it wasn't enough. Where do those feelings come from? Home.

A friend recently made the comment that we author at a pretty early age, the path we are going to travel, and although there is room for some changes, we are pretty insistent on seeing things through to the end

If that's true....and I believe it is, then our life for the most part is carved and shaped by our earliest experiences.

What ever achievements or destructions we have accomplished, were first created in those moments when we consciously or not, decided who we were.

The compliant one, or the disobedient, the shy inward child, or the adventurous outgoing one, the loving daughter, or the defient self-serving son, the forgiver or the grudge keeper, the peace maker or the trouble maker....

Once decided, we then attract to our lives, those individuals who will help us sanction that image... good or bad.

Maybe, there will be moments of enlightenment....where we recognize that we are not limited by those initial interactions. That we are greater than the sum of those events that tend to mold us into the people we become....

But, I think that's rare....our continued interaction with those who helped to form our attitude and belief system further substantiates that we are who they say we are...without the help of a great mentor, most of us are destined to live our lives as dictated by our preadolescent experiences and those whose myopic vision will not let us evolve past invisible boundaries.

Often the most difficult challenge we have as adults is overcoming those lessons ingrained at an impressionable age when we were not equiped to take care of ourselves...when we in fact should have been taken care of by others.

Those feelings of abandonment, inferiority, insecurity, shyness, rejection....attitudes which hinder our lives and often lead to destructive behaviors....

We are forever altered by these early moments where we responded to situations that now impact the way others view us, and more importantly, how we view ourselves.

But we are not destined to that outcome.. The one thing we can count on in this life is change....so why not use it....remove ourselves from the trenches of old belief and thought patterns?

Find the power to change .... Seek the mentor, the book, the inner voice that believes in you.

It takes courage, effort, and committment to write a new story...an authentic one based on the person you have become.

Only you know who that is....maybe it's time you told someone...