I’ve been aware the last six months or so how much I am surrounded by potentials. 

Note that’s potentials with an ‘s’. (Although I also like to think I’m also surrounded by potential without an ‘s’, this isn’t what I’m rambling about today).

This is instead about potential friendships. Those ones that seem to have exponential room for growth, but never quite get off the ground.

I was reminded last night, as I sped into a restaurant full of laughing, talking, gorgeous women how many friendships in my life have never been explored to their full potential, but are waiting there, just on the edge of ‘acquaintance’, for a little TLC to take them to the next level. Friendships that I feel, no … that I know, could be great.
 
Unfortunately though, these women, these potentials, don’t naturally fall into the same circles I am in. The very sad but very real factor of convenience is not there. Most often if they have children, their kiddos aren’t the same age, so we are not on the edge of the soccer field together, or in the same school, or experiencing the same growing pains. Some of them are in a very different field of work, and travel a lot for their careers. Sometimes these women don’t live in the same area, or even the same Province for that matter. Sometimes the promise of a friendship began but we moved away from each other, and we now stay connected in a somewhat removed way on Facebook, but are always thinking “what if”?

And do you know how there are some people you meet who you feel an instant connection with? Well I have felt this with all of these women. Every single one. And maybe if only we had met at a different time in our lives, or under different circumstances, we would be joined at the hip. But we didn’t. We are, for better or for worse, firmly rooted in our present world.

I would love to be hopeful and say I will push through those obstacles and logistics and inconveniences, making time to explore all of these potential friendships, but time is a most precious commodity with work and family for all of us, and my hope is probably not based in reality right now.

There are however a handful of these women whom I do work hard to become more connected with. We have lunch dates two or three times a year, and relish every ounce of connection and shared time we have with each other. But we do it in an almost a bittersweet way, I think. Knowing that when we leave the restaurant our lives will not intersect in the way we long that they would, therefore leaving us both recognizing what could be, and wishing for just a little bit more.

I do hope that as life becomes less full, as the kids grow up and there are only two schedules in the household and not four, that some of these friendships will flourish and grow. That time will allow for road trips to their homes in PEI, or long evenings of dinner and drinks on their decks only kilometres away. And maybe our circles will then grow a little closer together each year, intersecting just a little bit more, and turning those ‘potentials’ into regular ‘pillars’ in my life.

Here’s hoping.