Old Friends

They say you can always go home. Well, I’ve always thought that the mysterious ‘they’ is right, but that ‘home’ isn’t what they say it is. To me, home is where the teddy bear is. It isn’t a geographical place. It isn’t a historical place. It’s a state of mind where, with me, my teddy bear lays.

But even if home moves and you cannot go back home, you can always go back to old friends.

There’s something about growing apart from people that has the tendency to, well, never really matter. I’ve gone months – and sometimes years – without talking to people, and yet when we end up back in the same place, we pick up right where we left off. Whether it’s finishing each other’s sentences, or knowing exactly what to say to make the other person laugh…or picking up a heated bowling rivalry exactly where it left off – things can be the same as they always were.

The key is to realize that people don’t change at the core, but they do grow. Everyone gains experience. Everyone changes. But at the core, people are the same.

It’s kind of like a glass: The liquid inside changes, but the container is always the same. (Only it’s in reverse: The core of a person is always the same, but the outside changes.)

It’s comforting to know that some things never do change, though. I don’t know if I could spend 12 months a year living in the past, but for a few weeks, it’s nice.

I think this is also why people never get over someone they love. If you truly love someone, your cores are attracted. So when the outside changes, the cores will still love each other and be in love with each other. Perhaps this is why people tend to cut people out of their life after a breakup; they don’t want to deal with the complicated emotion of core attraction.

But that’s why I don’t regret past relationships. Romantic and platonic alike, relationships all have something positive to take out of them. In fact, I’d say I’ve learned more from failed relationships than I have from successful ones. (I’ve enjoyed the successful ones more, but I’ve not had to learn from them.)

We have to learn from failure, otherwise we will always regret the failure and be stuck in one place.

And maybe one of these days, I’ll get back to blog entries that don’t jump around and are more worth reading. It’s a good thing I only have a few readers right now, and they all will read no matter how bad they get. Thanks, guys!