I have this theory…

I have this theory that certain people come into our lives at certain times for certain reasons.  I truly believe that we cross paths with people just so they can teach us something so we can learn and we can grow.

The great thing about life is that no person is the same. Every person has their own story. Every person has their own experiences. From their experiences, they inherit wisdom; they form their own personal perspective. I think it is super important to acknowledge and absorb that we all see life through different lenses.

I believe certain people come into our lives so we can get a glimpse of life from their perspective. We are meant to meet them because we are meant to borrow their lens, whether it be for an hour, a day, a year, or a decade. Our own personal perspectives are so one-sided, bias, and unchanging until we are given the chance to embrace a fresh point of view.

However, it is our responsibility to take advantage of the opportunity to embrace someone else’s perspective. We must be open-minded and brave enough to allow their wisdom to change the shape of what we think we already know and understand. We must be vulnerable enough to take off our own lens and trust them enough to put on theirs.

Not all of the people you cross paths with will be the most positive influence, though. There are some people you meet who fail to put good energy into the world. But just through your encounter with them, you can learn exactly who you do not want to be. I personally have had some pretty toxic people in my life. As much as I wish I never had to deal with their pessimism, I am still grateful for their time in my life. They unknowingly taught me so many things. They taught me to complain less. They taught me to be more appreciative and accepting. They taught me exactly how I never want to treat people. They taught me to put more good energy into the world to counteract their negative energy. Although their energies were exhausting and quite painful to be around, they still helped me. In these cases, their negative and close-minded perspectives made me more grateful for the way I view things.

I also believe this theory is a healthy way to justify someone’s unforeseen exit from your life. Maybe you and a friend just simply drifted apart. Maybe someone you were once really close to moved away and you inevitably lost touch. Maybe you were in an overall healthy friendship or relationship that ended really badly and unexpectedly. But maybe all of the lessons and all of the wisdom you embraced from that person were all worth it regardless of the ending. Maybe you would choose the opportunity to borrow their lens over and over again even if it meant it would all still end terribly because you still learned. You still grew. You still saw the world from a different perspective and that right there is reason enough to be grateful despite the way they may have exited your life.

A healthy justification is in the fact that they were meant to come into your life but that does not mean they were meant to stay. They were meant to cross your path at the exact time that they did to teach you something you needed to learn at that specific time in your life.

Again, it is our responsibility and our job to allow these teachings to happen organically.  It’s not “Hi my name is Callie, here is everything that has happened in my life, and here is what you can learn. Now what can I learn from you?” It should be organic and subconscious. These lessons should be through conversations and actions and reactions. They should hide in mannerisms and observations and the way you each interact with the world around you. But it is up to you to have the awareness and have the maturity to acknowledge that they live differently.

Not every lesson is going to be obvious or present itself right away. Maybe you are having a hard time understanding why someone chose to leave your life in the manner they did. Maybe it took them leaving for you to realize how important they were in shaping the latest version of you. If you can point out one thing that they taught you about yourself or about life in general, that should be enough for you to have gratitude for their appearance in your life, not resentment.

Life is about learning and so many of those lessons come from our interactions with people. We must be willing to recognize people as teachers and we must be willing to learn through observing and listening. If we weren’t willing to learn, we would never grow and I think being static would be such a waste of our time here on this planet. Never be afraid to meet new people because you never know who your next teacher could be.

(I found this poem one day on Instagram and I was so intrigued by the way Izzy was able to put this theory I have always had into such a beautiful poem).