Burning Bridges

Moving all your life makes it so easy for you to believe that you can escape people। If you ask anyone that has moved from city to city throughout their childhood, majority of them will say that they have learned to make friends quickly but also learned to move on quickly। When you start your life in a new city, you meet new people, make new friends and build new relationships fast. You learn ways to join circles of friends that have known each other all their lives. Then when its time to move to a new place, you have to leave this fairly new set of friends, detach quickly and prep yourself for the next rotation. You can make friends or break friendships without really thinking long and hard about it. It doesn't really matter anyway since you'll most likely never see them again.

Lately however I have realized, this world is a very small place। Its one thing to run into people that live in your neighborhood, city or even state but when you start coming across people that live in other states or countries that you hadn't seen in 20 years, its a complete shock. This shock has lately become more and more of a reality for me.

I remember getting over things quickly in the past, relatively speaking. If someone hurt me or wasn't a good friend or did something to make me not want to speak to them, I would do exactly that, not speak to them without any warning or explanation or efforts for communication. It didn't really matter so much before because usually I would avoid them as much as possible and eventually just move so would never expect to see them again. Being in the the same place for a long time along with this globalization phenomenon is making me rethink this approach.

Perhaps some things are best dealt with and resolved, to whatever extent possible, immediately. That way there are no hard feelings and usually some form of closure. I tend to run from things that make me sad. The older I get, the more I don't like getting involved in the so called "drama" of life. Now that I'm beginning to settle down in what might be the last city I reside in, I'm starting to realize the importance of friendships, conflict resolutions and burning bridges. You never know who you'll see or need in the future. Its best to deal with life head on instead of ignoring it. This is very true for work relationships too. I see how important it is to make sure you leave every job without any ill feelings.

Its something I want to be able to do although I'm not very good at it. I see how burning bridges or holding grudges and not communicating or resolving conflicts will cause me pain in the future but sometimes I just hope that things will disappear or the pain will lessen over time.

--Bulbuli =)