Today I woke up (much like every other human in history) and checked my emails to find that I have officially completed my post-grad study and passed. It hasn’t felt exactly real up until this moment with only a lack of deadlines being the indication of success. I’ve been making jokes to a close friend of mine that the journey has come to a close and we’ll never see each other again; we will pass each other like ghost ships in the night and sail into the moonlit horizon, never looking back.
That’s just not true though is it? For any journey of any sorts. It never ends.
“Now we’re home from holiday, there’s nothing to look forward to – no adventure coming up.” – X
Bollocks, it’s all adventure and we are always moving forward. Each breath is a new experience. Every blink and heartbeat is brand new but so familiar that we hardly notice. Even in death, the wheel doesn’t stop turning, we carry on in new forms, physical or metaphysical.
My friend said to me that she fears that I will meet someone new and forget about her because we won’t be existing in the same space for eight hours a day every day as we have done for the past nine or so months. Being the wind-up that I am, I’ve been making jokes about it but the reality is that I don’t think my friend realises the impact (on the most pragmatic and basic level) of the human experience of friendship outside of that sense of panic. We rarely do. Sometimes we can be so consumed about the what-ifs of the changing status quo and transition of one phase of life (if transitions exist at all and it’s not just one huge timey-wimey blob) that we don’t allow ourselves to feel the joy of the experience in the first place.
It reminds me of that TikTok sound: “I’m carrying your love with me”, from a few months ago now. While it was sickly sweet, it has a point. We carry everything with us, our loves and hates and even the things we refuse to carry leave a mark through their absence. Whether we are on the journey of existence forever entwined with someone or something or for a mere fleeting few months, we can’t avoid the truth of the significance of it all.
Everything happens for a reason.
Even if you don’t believe that in the spiritual sense, in the scientific view, The Butterfly Effect is very much in play. It’s why I personally refuse to unpick at my choices because when you start to pull at that thread I’ll probably never stop.
So if you find yourself, like one of my nearest and dearest friends, plagued by the changing circumstances, remember: you will always matter more than think you do and you are loved not just by the people around you but by the nature of all things.
Z