Last night, I broke up with a friend.
It was a critical reminder of the impermanence of relationships.
Although I have hindsight as my companion, I will not regret a moment of the friendship because, every relationship in our lives is a life lesson waiting to be revealed.
Life is a collection of missteps, mistakes and misjudgments transformed to understanding. The regret of our neglected intuition turns to awareness, as we accept the lesson within the experience.
As I awoke this morning, I was relieved. I felt lighter, not heavier. The burden of maintaining a relationship past its expiration date lifted with the simple effort of releasing it from my grip.
These days, I measure my growth and maturity by my ability to say goodbye without a struggle.
I have found comfort in a quote I discovered in college:
"Relationships are in our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime."
One afternoon, at the end of another tortured day of being taunted by the mean girls in junior high school, I sat with my mother as she comforted me, "Rebecca, if you walk through your life with one or two people you can trust with everything you are and everything you have, that's all you need. You don't need anything more than that."
This conversation changed my mind. I decided I didn't need the approval or friendship of every one -- just one.
I am blessed with the ones, the lifetime friendships.
Knowing this unconditional, sustaining support, makes it easier to accept that everyone else in my life, is here for a reason or a season.
Some have come into my life as quickly as they depart. Some slowly fade away. Some I have broken up with and some have broken up with me.
Although I understand most of my frienships are not meant to weather my lifespan, I occassionally cling to an unrealistic potential I create, in hopes I can will the connection into a bond for eternity.
It was the separation from my husband that taught me -- attempting to force a relationship to work in the way I want it to is equivalent to playing tug-of-war with the ocean's current.
The current of fate is stronger than my human desires. Nature has a plan that is out of our control.
What we do have control over is: letting go. Surrendering to what is not, and releasing the burning desire to mold a person and the relationship exactly as we want it to be.
Letting go is a daily activity, as fluid as the ebb and flow of the sea.
The people, things, thoughts and experiences of my life are the waters to my beach. If I can remember this, no relationship is a failure no matter how dishonest, honest, healthy or unhealthy it is or was.
My departed frienship was necessary, it served its purpose -- to teach me a lesson.
What was the lesson I learned?
To trust the churn in my belly, the first whispered thought, because this is my intuition, my spirit, my ocean.
It is always right.
Today, I silence the regret and the know-it-all named "hindsight" to say: Thank you.
Thank you to every relationship that has rippled and surged in and out of my life. You have eroded my beach and exposed the grains of experience and wisdom necessary to live my life fully, without regret and filled with the sands of acceptance -- that my life is always exactly as it is supposed to be, relationships and all.
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