Everyone gets used to having people in their lives. Your have your friends, best friends and your family. You have the women in your sorority and the men in your fraternity. You see these familiar faces so often that you can't consider the possibility of something ever happening to them. You consider them invincible. You can't picture a life without them because it's just common knowledge that they will be by your side until you're both spinning around in wheelchairs. This is taking people for granted. It's a blind assumption that we need to stop making because you never really know when the clock will run out.
From personal experience, I was the type of person to wildly believe that I was invincible in the sense that I could do just about anything, somehow stay safe, and would live to be a 102 years old. I was absolutely fearless. There was nothing that anyone could do or say to stop me from what I wanted to do. Not only did I have this mentality for myself, but for everyone that I surrounded myself with.
I had my first reality check as a sophomore in high school when I lost one of my teammates in an accident. I took our entire friendship for granted. I never considered it a possibility that anything could ever happen to her. I thought I graduated from the mentality of invincibility, but had another rude awakening in my life when another friend was taken too soon, just two years later. They both played a significant part in my life and there isn't a day that I don't think about them.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was that you should always tell the people in your life how you feel about them. Take that second and send a text to your best friend, your mom or dad, your brother or sister. Give them a call! Do whatever your heart tells you to do. I would do anything to trade five minutes of my life so that I could just tell both of them that I loved them, how they impacted my life and how they were such good people. How their friendship genuinely changed me. Hell, I would give up everything.
I think it's imperative to hold the people in your life close. Take advantage of the time that you have in this moment to tell the people in your life how you feel about them. I refuse to take the people in my life for granted. I frequently send text messages that are basically essay's to all of my best friends and my family. It's expected.
I learned my lesson and I won't make the mistake of going off of confidence that they know how I feel about them and visa versa. I can't let time escape me anymore. I can't let another opportunity go past me. Let this article be used as a wake up call, instead of finding out a heartbreaking way.
Please take this advice from me. Just stop taking the people in your life for granted.
