Friendship & the Loneliness of Traveling

On the road again. And this time it feels different, because it is the same.

On the road again. But instead of my usual 4D this time I got the 5H seat on the Boeing 747-400 that usually carries me to another land and another time zone. And the only difference this time is that I am next to a person that doesn’t once look in my direction, let alone talk to me.

Years have gone by, and life has decided to expose me to different flavors of loneliness. I used to appreciate the one that the tube of metal crossing the skies at 10,000 feet of altitude afforded me. The internet changed that slowly, and then suddenly, over the years. WiFi on planes has become a necessity, so much so that flying without it has added to a popular challenge called “rawdogging it on the plane”.

Up in the air, friendship feels even more peculiar than it does on the ground. It hits like a collision of souls that happens gently or wildly, quickly or slowly, where two lives entangle for a moment beneath the vast indifference of the universe. Like all things that are alive, it breathes, and it shifts, and it stretches… and it inevitably slips quietly into the shadows. It feels as unavoidable as the eventual breaking of the bones of our existence, serenated by a melody both tender and melancholic. Like daily existence, it is undeniably real, and unforgivably indifferent.

Friends drift, but not because they stop caring or because we have failed. They fade not because something broke without warning, but because even the strongest threads stretch with use and time. Even light often takes years to touch again what it once knew. They were once beside us, close enough to breathe the same air, to laugh in the same tune, to complete each others’ sentences. But now, the air between us has thickened, and the words don’t come as easily.

Their voice echoes, faint and unfamiliar, like hearing an old song coming from a distant room in the quiet, rainy night. And it hurts. It hurts deeply. It hurts familiarly too, like the silence after a storm. It hurts like a bloody hole in our chest where their head used to rest.

I often wonder if they remember, if they miss me too. I wonder if they sometimes see a play, hear a song, or contemplate a sunset and think of me. Or if they have already become someone I wouldn’t recognize, turning me not into an abandoned man, but into a widowed elder.

Yet, I can see how there isn’t anything broken, and there isn’t anything wrong. We are both moving, shifting, like rivers that once ran parallel but are now finding new valleys, new depths. In truth, it is not betrayal, it is not abandonment. It’s just the quiet truth of growth.

We are not meant to hold everything forever. Some people come into our lives like a spark. They are bright, brilliant, and meant to light a certain darkness. And some burn longer, steady until they don’t… until the light they gave us becomes something that we carry alone. That it ended doesn’t make it less real. That it couldn’t stay doesn’t make it less beautiful.

And we must grieve them. But we must not chain our heart to what must be free. They are not gone, they’re simply elsewhere, walking a different path beneath the same sky. And maybe one day our paths will cross again in some quiet corner of the world. Or maybe they won’t… but we are still whole and worthy of love that is perhaps not yet known. Whether we know it or not, we are still open to new voices and yearning for new hands, new souls that will finds us in places that we least expect. Because within us, every shared moment still breathes, every laugh still lingers, and every goodbye still hums with meaning.

We are not the sum of who stayed, but the ever growing echo of those who touched our soul. And in that vast, aching beauty… we are infinite.