“It’s the circle of life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle
The circle of life”
We heard these lyrics as kids and we lived these lyrics into adulthood. Over the years one of the things that I have understood is the value that experiences hold and how important experiences are to keep us moving. Now often times we talk about life as a road, a path, or a journey. A path may be straight or full of curves but I have never really considered life to be a circle until I guess I had this recent experience. A couple of weeks ago an old friend reached out to me asking if I would be interested in collaborating with her; her vision was to discuss some of the holiday habits that people buy into during the festive season. Now I will leave it to her to focus on the interview piece but what I want to talk about is this experience. The experience of working with someone who growing up was your best friend but eventually attending different schools, joining new friend groups and quite possibly just growing apart became the reality. Now I guess what I wanted to talk about was the idea of what “growing apart” actually means or comes across as. Often times when we talk about growing apart it has somewhat of a negative connotation- “oh we just didn’t get along anymore so we grew apart” or “oh you know we just realized we were so different we grew apart”. What we might fail to recognize is that growing apart allows us the opportunity to possibly reconnect in the future but perhaps in a different way [therapist brain always trying to put a positive spin on things]. So in my case growing apart and coming back together was an extremely positive and slightly emotional moment. When Gurneet reached out to me I remember pausing for a moment, smiling and just appreciating the fact that my old friend had messaged me (I may sound like the biggest sap of life but internally that is my reality). Anyways I knew for a fact that whatever it was that she was asking of me, I would want to do it- not because I was obligated to say yes but rather I knew the exact genuine intention that Gurneet was asking me to collaborate. She didn’t have to sell me too hard on joining hands on this fun but important discussion around holiday habits. Life felt like it had come full circle for me but in a completely different way. I got to meet one of my first friends in a completely different walk of life BUT still I felt that same respect, closeness and caring towards my elementary friend. So what does the circle of life mean to me? I guess when I talk about the circle of life here, I refer to the idea of meeting someone at a completely different time of my life but still feeling the same emotion towards them. Even after many many years, seeing Gurneet made me smile from ear to ear. So I take the opportunity with this post to thank Gurneet- I thank her for letting me have a moment of my childhood back. I thank her for showing me that life can indeed go through so many changes where we grow apart but can still feel the exact same when we come together. And I thank Gurneet for just being her same, genuine self that I remember spending my recesses with. So cheers to moments like these; we may not be the same best friends or the “twins” that we were often referred to in elementary, but I will always be cheering on my first best friend!
Until next time fashionistas, keep smiling!
❤ sharmz
From Neha's Closet 