For old times' sake

 I bumped into one of my old friends back from childhood. It’s been a while since we crossed paths, and we started to catch up. It was weird at first; we had a few moments of awkward silence, but we started getting into our old comfort zone.

We probed into our old days in primary school and took ourselves back to memory land. To one of the best times, we had together. We couldn’t stop laughing at how we were back then, quality entertainment.

Life is busy nowadays; you never know when you will be lucky enough to see your best friend once you lose touch with them. We are all caught up in the making of our lives, in our prime age, and trying to use all we have in our hands in search of a better life.

We were amazed at how time kept trying to slip out of our hands. It just seems to get shorter and shorter by the day. The routines we have put ourselves in sometimes get the better of us. We hop onto this treadmill of life and keep running. The faster we run, the quicker it goes, a hamster wheel.

It is moments like this that remind us of the shortness of life. Moments like this remind us of what we should cherish the most. These moments shift our whole perspective in life. The journey is a continuous cycle, repetitive and full of routines. Engaged in our lives to make them better, we forget we have a life to live now.

There is an old Chinese tale, a conversation between a panda and a tiny dragon, a panda seeking to enhance his wisdom in life questions all that he is fortunate to find. One day he runs to a dragon. They started conversing about life and the purpose of it all. The tiny dragon’s wisdom was not as short as his size. With numerous years on his bank, he had a lot to give the young panda eager to learn. The panda spends the day; raising all he has for the wise one. When they were wrapping up their conversations, the panda asked: “which is more important, the journey or the destination?” The tiny dragon was silent for some moments, staring ahead to the road. The panda was very puzzled by the silence and started to get impatient. The dragon turned back to him and said, “It’s the company you keep.” And went along his way into the far, leaving the panda.

The Chinese have a great way of putting wisdom into their tales, right?

The companies we keep with us could make the whole journey easier or harder and even have the potential to determine how our destinations will be. They could feel it with joy and laughter or sorrow and cry. They could be places of comfort and growth or despair and misery.

Yesterday became a moment of reflection for me, started to see the value of friendships. The value of the people around us, the people that are dear to us, and the people that love us. The closer they are, the more at risk of being valued for less, as familiarity breeds contempt.

I wanted to tell you today to value the people around you. To appreciate them the way they deserve to be, to give them credit when credit is due, and to love them because they deserve to be. Call that best friend, the one you haven’t talked to in a while. I know that you think it would be weird since the years have gone by; you might have lost the touch you once had, but I tell you, it is worth it. The laughter you will enjoy with them will make you fall in love with life again. They are the moment life is all about. They are the valuable items we should chase and the beauty of the journey we have in life.

So, I encourage you to make that phone call; have a moment with your loved ones; look at the people around you and see them for who they are; love them as they deserve. Life is too short not to live the way it deserves to be. Life is not about the journey or the destination but the company we keep.

                    Be all you can be.✌

Let me know your comments below. 👇