No longer the same person

I was thinking this morning about all the people who come into our lives. Some, like family are there to begin with and we either remain close or becomes distant. Some friends remain friends all our lives. Some stay and then leave abruptly. Others enter our lives for a brief time and then we never hear from them again and there are those who enter, leave and then re-enter. Stranger still are those who inhabit the edges of our lives, not really present, not absent. They dip into our lives in odd ways, leaving a message here and there but never really connecting. I'm not entirely sure what any of this means - if it actually means anything at all. Perhaps we meet people to learn from them or they learn from us and then move on. Maybe they were a soft voice in an otherwise deafening world, a moment of love, a facilitator for you to continue your journey or vice versa. It's unusual isn't it, that sometimes we know that the relationship is disintegrating and yet we continue to hold on, grasping and clinging to shadows. Maybe we should just accept that people enter and leave our lives for all kinds of complex reasons and holding on may hinder our or their path. I was searching for people I've known from the past on Facebook this morning - some said they loved me - and I'm sure in the moment uttered, the words meant something. Though I must admit that I've never really known what is meant by that strange assemblage of words. Whilst I was searching I asked myself: Why do you want to find this person - do you really need the connection, are you just motivated by perverse curiosity? Eventually I gave up looking. They belong to a former time, to a former me. I am no longer the person they knew and they would no longer be, the person I knew.