Old Friends, New Friends

This is a picture of my friends Kate, Raquel, and I at the Illini Inn in Champaign, Illinois. I don't know who that orange-socked dude looking into the Inn is. An enthusiastic alumnus of the University of Illinois, or a fan of college football I am not, but the point of this picture and this post is to comment on friends and their entry and exit to and from our lives. 6 years ago, when I started graduate school at U of I, I never would have thought I would meet these dear friends, in the context in which I met them, and would have come back as an alum to hang out and enjoy a weekend with them. I only talk to a few people who I considered good friends in college or grad school anymore, though that is really my fault for being bad at keeping in touch. However, it is true that people come in and out of your life for a reason. When they leave, I mourn their loss, but I do so knowing that perhaps the reasons they were there in the first place were not significant enough to withstand time, distance, changes in circumstance, or changes in outlook on life. But does that make them purposeless or pointless, necessarily? No, but it does make the ones I do remain close to that much more priceless.