Events in our lives come and go and we find ourselves in places we would otherwise never venture surrounded by people we would never meet under different circumstances. Consider applying for a job at a company whose services you personally would never want or have call to use - working at a PR company, a media outlet or a commercial insurance company for example. In these situations we meet people whose paths would never cross our own. We live in bubbles, admittedly they vary in size but they generally have a limit, an edge beyond which people are unknown to us.
Forming friendships with people you meet through circumstance can be quite hard. Where we have multiple shared interests with people and our paths are likely to cross we find it easier to find a common ground; but when we find ourselves placed in the company of people who are completely unknown to us the only thing we can take for granted is that we are both there for the same reason - although even that can be quite difficult to assert at times.
Of the people I have known the longest in my life the majority are people who I would have met through any number of ways, who were known to me before I met them or known to people who were already close to me. Of the people I have met through circumstance - and to be clear by circumstance I mean the only reason you come together is that you were put together, and made no effort to meet that person in particular - none have managed to stay in my life. One or two have tried, and I do recognise their efforts, and in no way do I wish to seem arrogant but I don't believe they could have stayed in my life no matter how hard they tried. There has to be a joint effort for it to work.
The only people who have managed to stay in my life are people I truly believe I would have met anyway - if things had been slightly different and we had never met when we did then something else would have brought us together. You can jump to the conclusion that I don't like stepping outside of my "bubble" and I don't mind if you do because I certainly don't think I am the only one - as I said we all have bubbles and we rarely venture beyond them. It's only when they overlap and they join to create a bigger bubble that they expand. Proximity alone is not enough and perhaps the biggest fear that holds people back from stepping beyond their bubble is that they can pop - one prick steps into your bubble and the whole world can come crashing down.
I have been deleting contacts from my phone and generally cleaning house. After deleting hundreds of old emails and text messages I've archived a lot and sent a lot straight to the bin but it got me thinking about each of the people I was deleting and how I met them. About a dozen or so were from my University days - none of which I have spoken to in years. A handful were from College who survived the first purge a few years ago but I have now fallen out of touch with. There's no ill feeling harboured for anyone I deleted though we're just in different places now than we once were. It's always strange though when you look back at the person you were when you knew them and think about how different your life is now. The thoughts and opinions we have on trivial things change, the music you once loved no longer appeals or the movies you were once in awe of now seem low rent.
I'd like you to think about the people in your life and how you met them. Consider if things had been different would you still have met through other means? How many people have you met through circumstance and stayed in touch with?
