Summary
A message from the past arrives unexpectedly and shows me how much I've changed. A request for help, boundaries, and a question for the future.
On Saturday night, I had a special experience.
A friend from my youth wrote to me. The friend with whom we spent a lot of time together, but then life swept us apart.
He appeared not as a shadow, but as a messenger from the past.
Now I can see why he reappeared just now.
Summer meeting
In the early 90s, we were together a lot and were good friends. Then everyone went their separate ways and we didn’t keep in touch anymore.
We haven’t met often in the past thirty years. Maybe only three times.
These meetings always followed the same scenario. After the brief introduction of how are you and how are you, I would have liked to continue the conversation I had started, but the old friend said goodbye with the phrase “unfortunately, I have to go now, but I will call you anyway”.
Then he never called.
In the summer, on one of my last days in Hungary, we ran into each other again. There we deviated from the scenario described above. Although he was still in a hurry and said the closing lines of the scene, something happened.
With the realization of “I’m in a hurry, but I don’t want to have a quarter of an hour to talk,” he finally stayed with me and we talked for a while. We also updated each other’s phone numbers and he promised to call.
I didn’t really believe it. So it’s understandable that I was surprised when his message flashed on my phone on Saturday.
So you’ve made it this way
Our conversation started with his inquisitive question. “How are you?”
I started telling him about my experience, and his first reaction was this sentence: “So you’ve made it this way.”
It’s an interesting contrast to how differently this kind of surprise from a dear friend of mine, who regularly reads my writings, had affected me two days earlier: “It’s unbelievable that you’ve taken the plunge.”
It was strange to feel the vibrations in that sentence months after I had physically started.
I didn’t set out to transform my life to be an example. But this thought had come up very often in many conversations over the past year, so I suddenly accepted this role.
This thought was also an important part of Saturday’s experience, which is why I had to deviate from the conversation a little.
I am happy and happy to tell you how I am, but I try to leave space for my conversation partners. So after a few sentences I asked the question: “How are you? Have you changed since the summer?”
Let’s leave it at that…
The above answer already made me aware of the seriousness of the situation.
He’s in trouble…
In serious trouble, the following sentences made this clear without any special explanation.
I have many friends whose problems I have known for a long time, I see peaks and valleys that have been going on for years. Deepening health problems, existential crises are shared with me in confidence by old and new acquaintances.
This situation was completely different now. Simply because it came very suddenly, without any precedent. It almost crashed down on me.
And it is also different because I now see the world and my role in it with different eyes.
The feeling that someone wants help appeared in me immediately and clearly. Along with the warning that I should behave as a professional and not as an old friend.
There were many sentences uttered in the old friend’s cry for help that could have immediately dragged me into the vortex. Yet it didn’t happen that way.
The fact that certain sentences were mine 10+ years ago no longer shakes my present. With some sentences, I specifically remembered how many years ago this question was for me too, and how many years ago I let him go.
It was a very comforting feeling for me that – as I have so often before – I still feel the other person, that my typical empathy works, but I definitely react differently.
Tell me! How did you manage to get out of this?
After the long description of the case, this sentence suddenly appeared.
The unspoken request for help became explicit.
This sentence had already begun to take shape a few lines earlier. After all, I am a role model. My friend introduced the above question this way: “I envy” your attitude towards things.
It was not by chance that I left out the mention of specifics from this writing. From this point on, my hands are tied not only by friendly discretion, but also by professional etiquette.
According to my intentions, we will start working together in a cautious way.
A special experience
If I stopped here, the experience would be special.
For me, however, it became so for something else.
Lately, I have been working on repositioning my functioning and my place in the world in my head and for some time now on a practical level.
I believe and feel that I have gained a strong presence in my own life through the experiential path. I believe and feel that I can help others find this as well.
But I allow myself to have doubts and fears about whether I will embark on the path I have seen.
And then a “Tell me! How…” question comes and tips the scales in a special way.
This experience has become special among my many “Synchronicity” experiences.
A voice spoke from my past into my present.
And it spoke to the future.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
Linktree
Short introduction