For a long time I held on to the idea that the more years you know someone, the closer you should become with them and the more reasons you have for keeping them in your life. It is a bit ironic, considering I think my views are more realistic than idealistic. But I suppose we all have our weaknesses. Or perhaps it is the last bit of naivety I have left in me. Regardless, this much is sure: I have learned when to let go and when to hold on.

I was speaking with a few good friends of mine about this — about why we try to hold on to the people who have been in our lives for a very long time even though that is all they have become to us. Maybe the bond that we try to reinforce comes from a sense of home, a sense of comfort with the usual. After all, these are the people who know a lot about us and to whom we do not need to explain ourselves. The only problem with this idea is that these are the people who seem to only know who we were and not who we are now or who we are becoming. Essentially, the bond that we have been trying so hard to maintain simply does not exist. Once you realize that is when you should stop trying to hold on to something that has become artificial.

Coincidentally, if there is one thing I have learned this past year, and more specifically this past semester, it is that certain people will come into your life with whom you just click. Perhaps you will have known them for only a week or two, but for each day that you get to know them, it will feel like there has been a bond there that has been in the works for years. One day you realize that you all have the same sense of humor. Another day you realize that you had similar hardships in the past. But nearly every day you cannot fathom how you got by before knowing them. It is a rather interesting feeling — the realization that in the end time does not matter at all; instead, who the people are matters most. With some people — you just know. It is a feeling that is not cliche at all, but just true.