One early morning I got a text from my friend saying that she’s in need of coffee. I could tell from the way she wrote it that some shit must have hit the fan. As we got through the initial three-minute introductory chit-chat, she broke the news of her newly become singleness. Life for her was not the same as it had been the day before. At that point, I wanted to bribe the waiter in order to get us gin’n’tonics in a coffee mug (it was 8:30 am) and curse the hell out of the bastard who broke my friend’s heart. Except I didn’t. Because the man in the bastard role is also my friend. So I had to choose the adult and boring way of dealing with hardship. No gin’n’tonic and no cursing. Just coffee and life lessons from Oprah.

Since I was the one who introduced them to each other I feel strangely responsible for the pain they are going through. The guilt comes from my lack of consideration that the man I have known for more than ten years might not be the same man as he was in his early 20s. To clarify, before they started dating we haven’t seen each other for a couple of years due to his work-related traveling. But they seemed perfect for each other at the time. I was patting myself on the back for a job well done.

At the moment where I was sitting across from my friend who had just delivered the unpleasant news, I started thinking… What should one say in situations like these when you know that it’s all in vain? When you know that it’s too early to be all wise and patronizing. It takes time to get accustomed to new situations and the only thing that you can really offer is support. But must we really go through these moments of pain to get the process of change going?

Our minds and our bodies are programmed in a way to learn the ropes as quickly as they can in order to minimize the effort we put into doing something. It takes time for our brain to grasp the fact that the thing that changed isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, it’s neither good nor bad. It’s just different compared to the way it was before. The labels are put there by ourselves and it’s those labels that directly impact our decision making which impacts the changes in our lives.

So here’s to my two dear friends. We should always be grateful for people who pass through our lives. They are the ones who help us turn the wheel of change. Their way of thinking puts in perspective the way we label our decisions. Trough hardship we learn our most precious lessons that define who we become later in our life. We are not the same people as we were yesterday. Nor we will be the same tomorrow as we are right now.

 

/ Text: Ines Šercelj