A friendship of twenty years fades out without a quarrel.
Take this situation apart. Each piece goes in one box: yours, or not yours. There is no third box, and almost nothing falls in one piece.
Yours
- Whether you call once instead of waiting to see who gives in first.Waiting to see who calls first is a game both players lose. Somebody has to break it, and you are the only one of the two you have any say over.
- Whether you convict him in your mind for his silence.Silence can be read to mean anything you like. The judgment you attach is yours, and it decides whether you eventually call with warmth or with an invoice.
- Whether you let the friendship go in gratitude if it does not come back.Some things end without anybody being at fault. Twenty years were what they were; they are not undone because the last chapter is quiet.
Not yours
- That he gets in touch less often.His time, his busyness, his other life. There is no quarrel to resolve, and that is what makes it awkward: there is nothing to repair.
- That your lives have grown apart.Two people change in different directions for twenty years. That is nobody's failure, it is what happens.
- Whether he misses it as much as you do.You do not know, and the answer changes nothing about what you can do today.
The reasoning. Loss without a quarrel is the hardest kind, because there is no moment to point at. The cut helps by showing that the left column is entirely closed: his pace, your direction, his feelings. The right column holds three things still available today, and the last of them, letting go in gratitude, is not giving up but the most honest option once the first two yield nothing.
- Let us see to it that the memory of those we have lost is a pleasant one.Seneca
Nearby situations
More on this topic: Loss and fate