Taking it for granted.

This has been an exceptional past few weeks for me, culminated by an extraordinary weekend.

It never ceases to amaze me how much of life we take for granted, and how much we can miss those things when they are gone. I had the privilege of spending time with some old and dear friends of mine this weekend, some of whom I have not seen for some time. It was amazing how good it felt and how familiar we still are even though we'd not seen each other for so long. We essentially just picked up where we left off, as if we had only seen each other just yesterday. Good friends like that are hard to find, it's not good to lose touch with them, but it's very good to know that the friendship endures, irrespective of your communication level.

It makes me think about how we make connections with people. Why is it that some people can just "mesh" together, get each other, and others are like oil and water. They might be able to get along, but there's no cohesion. I've met a lot of people in my life, some of whom I even called friends, but most of them have faded out of my life and grown into their own lives. There are a select few, however, who endure. We are important parts of each other's lives, and we can feel it. Why are we so special to each other? What's the connection? I don't believe it can be broken down so simply as to say it's common experience, "birds of a feather" if you will. It runs deeper than that. Some of the "connections" I've made are with people who are 100% different than me. We live completely different lifestyles, and as a result hardly see each other. Yet, when we do, the connection is there. The passage of time has not weakened it.
By that same token, new connections can be made at any time in our lives, it is not reserved strictly for our youth. I've been finding these connections all of my life. I've made two of them as recently as this past year. It kinda freaks me out. It makes me wonder; how? How does it work? Why does it work? Does it really matter? Am I analyzing this too deeply? Yeah, probably.

Maybe there are some things in life that can be taken for granted, and strong friendships like that are one of them.