SEASONS

Reflections yield unexpected results. I’ve been looking into myself, discovering what was allowed versus what was accepted. I realized something. I have only had jobs with high turnover rates, and this shuffling of personnel has created an expectancy in me that has carried over into my personal life by slow, repetitive indoctrination. I treat people as seasons rather than family.

It started as early as 20. I worked a valet job. When it first happened, I didn’t notice. I found myself shaking the hand of a new face, welcoming new hopes and dreams. I discovered families, histories, hobbies, and backgrounds. I began knowing people for who they truly were.

Then, almost abruptly, they’re gone. My boss tells me they quit or were fired, or my coworker tells me they put in their two weeks’ notice. Life called them in a different direction. With that, the education they were getting, the relationship they were building, or the career they hoped to obtain were conclusions I never got to witness.

When you’re young, you wish to make friends. I was fortunate in school, obtaining three of my lifelong brothers. I was blessed at church, building a family without a bloodline. Even social media granted me text buddies. At work, I was experiencing a different story.

Being a Christian, you always want to have those people who walk the road to Christ with you, but what I received were replies growing more distant and calls more infrequent. Folk stopped checking in. Within days, or even a month, it felt like we were strangers again.

I hated it. My mind understood that people are only here for seasons but my heart cried out, “How dumb a law of life!” To go from, “Can you pray for me?” to the void of silence sending back your electronic telegram with, “Read Monday.” To visit, “You good people,” to not checking in for years.

How crazy is it to expect people to be seasons while also expecting people to have eternal life. Doesn’t that seem contradictory? We may share in eternal life with the Savior but we don’t have to practice it with each other? We are all a part of the body of Christ but our limbs live in different parts of the world?

To realize that friends of twenty years can suddenly have their season end is so… tragic. To have told a preacher, “Til death do us part!” only for a lawyer to help you sign divorce papers. Brotherhoods in shambles over women and money. Sisterhoods ruined by jealousy. It didn’t occur to me that the temporary of all these things seeps into the mind like parasites, sucking away the vibrancy of youthful dreams.

Subconsciously, I started to mourn interpersonal relationships. The devastation became a sickness. With each passing job, passing friend, or passing family member, I found myself succumbing to an ideology: “Everyone is a season.”

Nowadays, I treat people like they’ll be gone in a little while. I don’t get too close because once I’m invested in your future, I’ll want to see it through to the end. It’s best for my heart that I don’t go that deep. The climb back is always… melancholy.

There’s a coworker out there I have no idea if she died from cancer or not. Another coworker I don’t know if covid killed him or he bounced back. There’s another that I don’t know if he’s still married or still cheating. There’s a baby out there I never got to meet. There’s a business I never got to support. All because they found a better opportunity, or were fired, and I was an acceptable loss in the severing.

This is why I expect people to leave. Today, it could be a coworker. Tomorrow, it could be a friend. Next week, it could be a lover. Next year, it could be my mother. We all have the example of Christ sticking with us through thick and thin, but still choose thin for each other. It’s disheartening.

I, too, have fallen for the culture. This individualistic society has taught me well. Everyone can go, even if they’re not supposed to. Why fight for those who don’t want to stay? As much as I want to answer, I leave such questions to God. I honestly don’t know why, or perhaps, I’m scared to know why. I’ve cut so many people off prematurely and have been cut off just the same.

It’s easier to allow someone to leave or dismiss them than it is to work through their, and my, distasteful habits. No one wants to endure and suffer long. Why do you think divorce rates are so high? We leave during the seasons meant to break us from the ideologies that keep us suffering. Here, in the lull, we are to work on ourselves for the betterment of our relationship, but instead, we choose to sever connections. Comfort is a disease.

Sometimes, you have to help them through their addictions to get the version of them that heals you. Sometimes, you have to battle them through their faults so that you can witness the growth and be inspired. Sometimes, you have to war with the sin to bring the salvation. The easy path is to let them go. The meaningful path is to hold them close.

I understand that people hurt people, and you have to protect yourself. By all means, protect yourself. I am just flabbergasted that I will have met thousands of people by the time I die and will have only fully known less than a dozen. Faces I will have cried with, joked with, went to events with, made love to, and went to God in prayer for, I will not remember their name. To me, that’s sad. A woman I truly loved believed I would go off and get married and forget her, and she impacted my life in a deep place. How disconcerting.

I write this not to have my questions answered or to attempt to answer them myself. It is just taking notes of the effects of decisions. Friendships not cultivated because they’ll be gone in a year or so. Partnerships not maintained because people forget to check in. Family abandoned because they hurt me. When I think about it, I can’t readily say that this is what God wanted for us, but I also couldn’t tell you how to obtained what He would want for us. I’m just stuck.

Alas, I hope no one acts like this in heaven. I hope we value the moments we share rather than treating each other like a passing season, overlooking Winters to have a good time with the Springs. I hope we appreciate the Summers as much as the Falls or vice versa. When you think about it, there are fond memories in each season and things to look forward to when they return.

In spring, I look forward to the flowers and greenery. I look forward to the rain and women coming out in summer dresses. In summer, I look forward to vacations, visitations with my mother and father, blockbuster movies, and pool time. In fall, I look forward to the outfits people wear, the first feel of the cool breezes, and football. In winter, I look forward to my air conditioner never turning on, holidays, holiday movies, and, for once, people putting on some clothes and covering up.

If I could treat getting to know people the way I treat getting excited to see another movie or game, I’d probably do better by all people, even the ones I serve with weekly at church. There’s something exciting to experience with this person, and I need to be excited to see it come. I need to set aside time to truly enjoy who they are. I’m sorry I don’t always remember to do this.

To those who have come into my life and found me unwilling to get to know the depth of them, I apologize. I have not done a good job in viewing your time with me as precious rather than business. I am sorry to the friends I stopped checking in on. I apologize to those I only gave the surface level of me.

I wish I could say it stops here, but another set of coworkers are leaving the job and I have to prepare my heart for their replacements. In seven years of working the same job, I have seen over two dozen immediate supervisors swapped out, three supervisors above them changed, eight supervisors above them moved, and another nine supervisors above them moved. During these supervisory changes, over fifty coworkers retired, transferred, quit, or were fired. I don’t even remember half of their names.

There is enough personnel movement to make you think nothing and no one is permanent. Yet, I still think about so many of them and wonder how they’re doing. Even though they stopped checking in, and even though we no longer talk, I miss them. I’m still amazed I picked up a little sister out of these years.

Should you fight to keep people in your life? I don’t know. Should you let people leave? I don’t know. What I do know is that I, personally, need to work on appreciating people while they are here. Despite how much pain I receive when it’s their time to depart, I’d rather depart knowing we impacted each other’s lives than for us to depart and not even know how many siblings we have. I have to do better. People are not seasons, even if we don’t spend more than a few months in the same environment.

You don’t just endure until you’re your favorite season comes along. You don’t just sit at home because the weather outside isn’t fun. You don’t just let time do its thing. You have to live with people. Otherwise, you risk no one being around when it’s time to die. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be surrounded by those whose lives I had little impact on than to live life without anyone. There is something special about every individual you meet. There is something good about them. Be wise in your interactions, but give people a chance to prove to you who they really are.

Good luck,

The Novelist Dario