fascinating, forgiving, final

As you go through life, you'll see there is so much more that we don't understand, and the only thing we know is things don't always go the way we planned.  -The Lion King

Nothing is more fascinating for me than the way people come in and out of my life.   I tend to think that I put in a fair amount of effort to maintain reciprocated relationships, and that if they were meant to be in my life, they will be.   But isn't it overwhelming to think about timing, and how if you had been early to a meeting and grabbed a cup of coffee to kill some time, you could strike up a conversation with someone and the person and/or the conversation could change your life forever?  It's for this reason that I often wonder why people think they're so limited.  I wonder why the only kind of love people feel fulfilled from often tends to be romantic love.  And why the lack of it is enough to drive someone mad.  We're so quick to pick out all of the things that life (fate, luck, love, whomever) hasn't given us, and so quiet and ungrateful at times for the things that life has blatantly laid in our path-- it's silly. 

It puzzles me what length of time it takes for something to be "life altering" too.  I think it all comes down to a single moment that changes things for  us.  And it's what moments we let define us that help decide who we are and who we aren't.  I was told once that we have every tool we will need in this life to be completely fulfilled, we just need to learn how to use them.  I often get told that one of my biggest weaknesses is my compassion--my likeliness to lay it all out there in a moment of intimacy with someone (and for clarification--I mean intimacy in the sense that you're really connecting in conversation with someone) but it seems silly to think that way.  I'd rather someone know where my head is at, then to let them struggle along trying to understand me.  If I'm an "emotional mess" than fine, but it's doubtful that someone in my life doesn't know where they stand with me.  

Having said that, I'm hoping to work harder to improve the quality of friendship I have with people who are head over heels awesome additions to my life--and to mend any messy things I have skirted dealing with.  Because it's not until I saw all the ways in which a person could be there for you, that I realized all the ways in which you would never be there for me.