FAREWELL

(drawings from years back..)

(...but similar feelings in today)

Today I’ve said goodbye to someone.  A person from abroad whom I’ve got to know a little bit in the past two months –   someone whom only since yesterday I  started really seeing and feeling as a new Friend that I’m glad to have met…

I’ve had to say goodbye many times in my life. I have never found it easy. And for that reason I never really say goodbye in my mind to people that have entered my heart.  Even I don’t know how far in geography or time that person will be taken from me, I can’t bare… to say goodbye. In a way they never leave me.

 In the years I lived in France and coming to Finland in between years I always felt departures as a small death and arrivals as a small birth. I was always eager to see people in one country or the other.  But I held sadness in the fact that people in Finland could not really understand or know what my life was about in France and then again the people in France could not relate to my life in Finland. In one country I missed people from the other country even I enjoyed where I was. Now that I’ve been back in Finland for several years, there are people I’ve lost contact with but who are as close to my heart as back then. Some I have met again with the feeling that it was just yesterday we last met --- but many, with a child or two (or three!) alongside them…hmm… I realize – yes -  years have passed and much has happened in between! Many of us have a family of our own and a new kind of unit or chapter in life.

-          Today I’ve said goodbye to someone. I knew my eyes would water after she was gone. As I saw her walking away in the distance, the agony of letting go reminded also of other times I’ve said goodbye to someone. Once again, I saw the pain of letting go. Farewells. Only when we are apart from people do we really see the space they leave empty within us…Today, alongside with the emptiness I felt a fulfillment in the realization that the things that truly connect people will never separate them. And so my melancholy demanded to wear some other clothes but those of sadness.

As humans we need to be connected with others. But I see that our ability to connect with others is often like searching for a radio channel – are we able to fine-tune in with ourselves and through that with others? When do we find ourselves tuned in the same channel with others? I know when we search to be tuned in to our hearts in all honesty, there are more channels opened for real connection. With real connection I point to a honest, constructive attribute in a relationship.

My heart gained this new friend through the experience of sharing the same channel of communication and discovering that life is really an island of experiences we share. This happened over a cup of coffee, some cheesecake and conversation about the roads of our lives…J  As humans we all share the same roots and we are really not so different from others as we so easily tend to think at times …  Some old woman – wish I had met her! – has said that we are all the same age – but at a different time. Be it that you’re from a different cultural background or even a lot younger or older – doesn’t mean you cannot be connected, I would think it gives the opportunity to find even more one can learn from another. All of us are growing older in age, gaining more experience of life in the world we all share. Learning and connecting is really all about how we look at where we are. How can we zoom in closer and also zoom further to see the place where we’re at?

 As there are people who have at the end only taken up a room in the house of my memories,  I have at a time also grown more distant to new connections I guess with the idea that I won’t let other’s get close to me because I’M GOING TO LOSE THEM ANYWAY. What I didn’t know is that in doing so I lost a part of myself as well…. or in all paradoxality of life, maybe instead  I found me? Truly. We are meant to connect and if we don’t something shrinks within us.

 This actually makes me even think of this blog  -  I wanted to speak out to someone but didn’t know to whom anymore… who to write and share… and so through the blog I opened up space in me for myself and to anyone who wants to enter this livingroom of my heart and mind.  Be in or be out, either way, you’re welcome.

 What I’m really trying to get down to in all these thoughts is something that lit up in me during these goodbyes. I said already before that I had a realization that the things that truly connect people will never separate them. The moments with people in which I’ve experienced that we’ve been tuned in with eachother to the same channel despite our differences and connected in understanding of eachother’s lives  - those moments and people have never left me. I can press ‘play’ in my mind and review it over and over again and remember.

 We all need to be seen for who we are and it has nothing to do with some egocentric desire. There are moments we all have in which we wish someone would see us in the truth of ourselves in all simplicity. And love us. In today’s society we have little faith in the hope that someone could look at us that way so we add a whole lot of lines in our speaking and costume to our being as to shield ourselves from what is underneath all of us. So people who could really unite in depth cannot because so much is a play and drama. And many I’m sure are lost from themselves not knowing who they really are because they’re trying to be something they imagine they should be.

So actually as I look at my life and all the “visitors” that have come along during that journey so far, I notice I see people also in context of some dialog I’ve been having with myself and they’ve added perspective or brought me in new direction in my lifestory. It’s like we can all fill out this sentence in some way: I’ll always remember how _________ taught me ______________________________________________________.

I remember and treasure people who have taught me something real about life. People, who have been themselves, open and real about the trials of their lives and noble in the arms of life. People who have stood by me at distant shores. I remember also people who have mirrored me  - me. In who’s company I’ve dared to look and see the things that I tried to hide from. MUCH in important connections seem to be those that bring us closer to ourselves… even we don’t see it when we are looking at the other. It just happens. Just like the old lady said we are all the same age – but at a different time….as in we all have many similar kind of experiences but at a different time – and meeting at the table of those experiences we are not only connected with another, but ourselves and the world we’re in.

 I look outside the window and down the road. I see people I don’t see. They are somewhere to be found but I don’t know where. Sometimes I remember and think, wish I could have had at least one more day. One more time to meet. To speak. To make some gesture. To stamp them with a V.I.P. sign… (In thinking this way I also realize how many occasions I miss with the ones who are now close by. )

Sometimes, do we lose people because we think to have not expressed our care well enough and so we let go of them, ourselves, thinking that since the other is not remembering ‘either’ I must not mean much to him/her either. And so days, weeks, months, even years pass with the absence of communication. The place of meeting happens only in people’s memories until you find yourself asking again: I wonder how she/he is doing… I wonder where she/he is….

Reconnections are beautiful and that is one reason I’m grateful of Facebook (I won’t get to other thoughts now ;-)  The feeling of finding someone from years ago or being found by someone – feels amazing. A bridge is built over the distance of time and geography.  You remember what you’ve shared in the past and slowly discover you’ve both changed or “stayed the same” and something comes back to life (or then doesn’t).  I myself don’t find Facebook good in tuning in deeper with people, but almost like a huge livingroom with tabloids on the walls telling what people are up to but  with whom you rarely really (can) connect there. It makes me sad of something I can’t yet fully define.

The train of my thoughts has now worn me out ;-D, I’ve been waiting for ”an end” but it hasn’t come but I’ve got to stop now. For all friends and strangers (?) who have read this far, wow, thank you for coming along. Now let’s go and have a cup of something… 

 No goodbyes -

in the arms of life,

Rina