I recently caught up with a friend, by phone, although we were in the same building. My work in assessing patients for continued care in hospitals and nursing facilities brought me to a previous place of employment, a local hospital. I called the Social Worker to let her know I would be arriving the next day to complete the assessment. She is a friend I had met while working there and she is still employed there!
After talking with her and both of us saying we should get together soon to talk about what has happened since we last met up, I began thinking about all the people I have met and become friends with in my past. The number is too great to think of. There have been so many. But, how many have I actually kept in touch with?
Back before the days of Facebook, and WeChat (Chinese Facebook) and other social media sites, we pretty much lost contact with friends we had met and only regained contact when, like in my example, meet up for some unforeseen reason. Even with the social media sites, how many friends out of the hundreds or for some, thousands of people do we actually make physical contact with?
Many times I have had the conversation: “Yeah, we should meet up again soon!” only to dismiss the thought the moment the chance meeting or call ends. But this is a mistake and a missed opportunity. I truly believe that we meet people for a reason. Sometimes we are cognizant of the reason, and sometimes we need to be mindful of the why. There may be greater plans at play that we too easily dismiss.
Today, I will choose to ask my friend to lunch next week. Actually, there are two friends I need to meet up with, even if it is for the simple reason of catching up and reestablishing the connection of that friendship. It is important. We live for connection. Without a connection to other important people (aka: friends), our lives are dull, shallow and quite depressing.
Who will you reach out to today?
The Journey of a thousand miles 