Lost Friends

"This ain't goodbye
This is just where love goes
When words aren't warm enough
to keep away the cold"

- Song lyrics written by a couple of genuine writers.

These words make the perfect lead in to today's post about lost friends. By lost I don't mean wandering around in the forest somewhere, or driving down a highway in the wrong direction. I mean friends that you highly valued and were close to at some point in time who have drifted away over the years.

I started thinking about this drift. What causes it? Why don't we stop it? Do we recognize what we're losing as we allow deeply meaningful relationships to simply drift away? The songwriters allude to a "cold" that constantly presses in on us, always trying to erode the most precious of our relationships. Why do we succumb to that cold?

I've lost a lot of friends over the years. They're not dead, they're just adrift, and I don't find myself launching search and rescue missions to go scour the waves in search of them. Boo for me. These are people who were once my closest compatriots, my sworn allies, individuals who would die alongside me in battle just so that I wouldn't have to die alone.

It's sad. I feel the loss. So what does one do in the midst of loss like this? You go find your friends, reconnect, start showing up in the midst of life's battles to provide reinforcements. Rekindle the mutual friendship that you once shared and build on that foundation. We shouldn't have "lost friends," because if they were truly friends in the first place, the moment we realize we've lost them, we would go seek them out and find them again.

The song ends...

"As long as we've got time
Then this ain't goodbye"