Old friends

.
The term ‘old friends’ can have several meanings.
The most obvious one ~ which hardly ever is the one that is meant when we are talking about old friends ~ is the literal meaning: that our friends indeed are ‘old’; of advanced age; ‘seasoned citizens’.
More often what is meant is that we have known our friends for a long time ~ like that we have known our friends since childhood.

If we are lucky we have stayed in touch with the friends that we grew up with; friends from the different phases of our lives… As it turns out, we often don’t have to be in touch with our friends on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis ~ with friends that we have known for a long time it can be enough to catch up every once in a while. In our often so busy lives that may mean only once or twice a year. And with really good friends, whenever we get back in touch ~ we seem to just continue where we left off the last time we had a chance to meet…

Yet ‘old friends’ can be much older than that.
When we are going about our lives, we may meet people for the first time, and still have the distinct feeling that we know them. That we have met them before.
It seems that we have a bond, a friendship, with this newly met person that cannot be easily explained as it feels like it stretches beyond time to a place that perhaps once was ~ a long, long time ago.

To me it is those type of meetings ~ even though they are few and far between ~ that make me feel that reincarnation is reality. The explanation for meeting old friends like this then all of a sudden is simple: it is a bond that was created in another time, another place when we met; spend time, built a friendship so strong that it never diminished over time. And when we met again in this moment; here, now ~ today ~  there is that spark of recognition. That flash of energy that brings back the memory of a friendship much older than we are; perhaps even older than time itself…

Meeting old friends like that is a precious experience. It is recapturing something that once was, and that may or may not be again. Because what we do after the initial recognition, meeting our old friend is up to us.
We may in this life experience never be very close with our ‘old friends’, and yet share something very, very special…
.
.