It has come to my attention that my previous blog post may have come across as angry or vengeful – saying you shouldn’t waste your time on people who don’t know what they want.

While I still believe this to be true, there is much more to it than that. So, please let me clarify. There’s an old quote that says “Everyone who is in your life is meant to be a part of your journey, but not all of them are meant to stay.” 

There are six billion people on this planet and every single one will experience this day differently. Everyone is on their own journey. No matter how close you are to other people, we still each walk our journey alone. 

And we all go through periods in our life where we’ve set goals and are hell-bent on achieving them and other times where we can’t solidly commit to anything because we honestly don’t have a plan and no idea what we want out of life.

Not only is it important that we stay true to our own path, we need to understand that others need to do that as well. Even though our paths may cross, we may not be meant to travel our entire journeys together and we need to learn to be grateful for the lessons we learned during the time we were together.

In my last post, I mentioned that at the end of last year, I let go of a personal relationship that I had allowed to keep me in limbo for a decade, as well as a professional relationship that I invested three years in. Although there is pain and heartache that accompanies those losses, this understanding of walking separate journeys, as well as concentrating on the lessons those relationships taught me and being conscientiously grateful for that person and those lessons, has not only helped me to heal some of that heartache, but has given me the courage to move on.

To the personal relationship I left behind after more than a decade – thank you for showing me that I could be loved again, after a failed marriage. And thank you for never losing your focus on being an amazing father, grandfather and provider for our children.

To the professional relationship I waved goodbye to – thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping me figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Thank you for reigniting, in me, a fire for writing and music, that has been dimmed for far too long. And thank you for the valuable  things I’ve learned (even WordPress!) and especially, for the multitude of meaningful relationships I have forged because of sharing your path with you for awhile.

When you find someone or something that you really care about, it’s only natural to want them to stay forever, but it’s imperative, for our own well being, that we realize that is not always possible. 

So when you end up on the same path with someone, who is traveling in a different direction than you (and you will), have the courage to do what’s best for your journey and send them on their way if needed, but try to do it with gratitude, to honor the time you spent together.

And who knows, our paths may cross again, somewhere down the road. Life is wonderfully weird like that.,