“Ships that pass in the night,
And speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown,
And a distant voice in the darkness,
So on the ocean of life,
We pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice,
Then darkness again, and a silence.”
Ships That Pass in the Night
from “Tales of a Wayside Inn”
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
People will tell you a friendship that ended is a friendship that failed.
I say they’re misguided.
Friendship is a strange, funny ride – hard to put into words. An adventure with a blurry beginning and an uncertain ending. When I picture it, I think of those old stories about mysterious trains, the Orient Express and the like. A long, thrilling journey. And every journey has a last stop.
Imagine it. The landscape unspooling past the window: fields, tiny towns, then long stretches of woods and darkness between them. At every station the doors sigh open and someone new steps aboard. They take the seat beside you.
At first, maybe just a polite smile. After a while, a word or two. You offer them some of your candy. A few stops later, you can’t stop laughing, and somehow this stranger has become your accomplice on the journey.
But you don’t know how long they’ll ride this train. Neither do they.
For a while, you share everything. The view, the stories, the jokes, the laughter, the long quiet hours. It may be a ride to remember. It may last years. That’s the thing about adventures: you never know how long they’ll last. And in the end, everyone holds a ticket to their own destination.
I don’t know what decides how far we get to travel together. I suspect it simply happens when the time comes, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can delay. We can deny. But sooner or later the brakes ease, a platform slides into view, and someone gathers their things.
Maybe they step off long before my journey ends.
Maybe it’s the end of my journey that parts us.
Either way, the length of the ride doesn’t define what we remember of it.
So I don’t think we should grieve when a friend steps down onto their platform. I think we should cheer them on. Both of us heading our own way: me toward the next station, them toward whatever’s waiting for them.
The train pulls away. The seat beside me sits empty now, still warm from my friend. But there’s room for someone new, a new friendship somewhere up the line.
The friend who stepped off won’t be forgotten. Our ride was a moment in time, and it’s folded into every mile that follows. Nothing can take that away.
A friendship isn’t the destination. It’s the stretch of track we covered together.
Funny. People have a way of saying the same thing about happiness.
Maybe they’re one and the same.
