Moving On…
Greeting dear friends & fellow navigators, & welcome to my world this week. I kept looking outside the window, letting the colours in the sky move in gentle layers. My phone was dying, so I stopped checking it, & for the first time during the week, I had nothing to distract me from the feeling to surface. An old friend had texted earlier. A friend who once knew everything about my life, & now only gets fragments. We used to speak in the same language. Now we exchange occasional updates. Even occasional feels generous.
I have not been able to articulate this feeling before, but over time I have come to realise we move on far earlier than the moment we admit it to ourselves.
This drift does not begin when someone leaves a city or stops replying. It starts when closeness is still there, but your life has already begun to change shape around it. When you think everything is the same because you want it to be the same, but something inside you has already shifted.
No one talks about this part. The part where you are still laughing with your friend, still sharing stories, still meeting at the same corner, but something in you has already stepped forward.
Just a little. A tiny movement the other person does not see. The kind of movement you only recognise years later. Not in a dramatic way but in the most ordinary way possible.
It is not betrayal. Not neglect. It is simply, our lives are always in motion, & we seldom realise when a chapter has begun to turn. We are all carried forward without noticing the journey, & this is exactly how we grow out of friendships, too. By continuing without meaning to. The closeness, once felt like a given, became something we had to reach for, & reaching becomes harder when life keeps pulling us forward.
The funny thing is the real loss is not when you realise you drifted. The real loss is you did not notice it while it was happening. This is the part we never think about. Not the distance. But the blindness.
You wake up one day & realise you have already moved on from a version of your life you never thought you would outgrow. A group of friends. A familiar street. A dream, & the shift happens quietly, without a farewell. It makes you feel like you were careless with the important things.
But it is not carelessness. It is a kind of instinct. Humans are built to keep moving. We are always adjusting ourselves to fit the present, & when something stops fitting, even gently, we loosen our hold without announcing it.
Maybe this is why the past hits us hardest not when it ends, but when we suddenly remember how much space it once occupied. A memory arrives, & suddenly you realise you have lived an entire life between now & then.
But drifting does not erase what was real. It only changes the direction of the warmth. Love does not have to stay active to stay meaningful. Friendship does not have to look the same to still matter. Some connections do not travel with you, but they live in you. Like a foundation you forgot you were standing on.
As the day began to close, I watched the sky again. The colours had shifted. The city kept moving whether I paid attention or not, & I thought about how friendships often work the same way. They move. We move. Sometimes in the same direction. Sometimes not. The important part is not to hold on until your hands hurt. The important part is to notice what shaped you before you moved forward.
So, the next time you think of a friend you no longer speak to often, let the thought be a reminder, something once belonged to you in a real way. Let it be a reminder you grew because of them, even if your lives no longer overlap.
Ask yourself, not why you drifted, but what stayed with you even after you did. Because moving on is inevitable. But forgetting is not.
Just few observations again dear friends & provide an opinion in my world. Thank you for stopping by, I appreciate your being here. If my journey encourages you also, all is well with my soul. Looking forward to next week; this is Kenn Butler in Paradise, Nelson with best wishes.
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