I was talking recently to a recent college graduate who is a friend of my youngest daughters who graduated near Portland this June. I was telling her that my way of dealing with relationships in my early 20s was to only stay with someone 3 months if I wasn't completely serious about that relationship staying together ongoing and getting married. This worked for me because I found it just too painful to break up by the time you spend 6 months with someone. It doesn't even matter whether it is a good relationship or a bad one during that time. If you spend 6 months with anyone you grow attached and somewhat symbiotic with them. So, unless you see the relationship going somewhere serious it is just better to back off and just become friends or just to walk away completely.
Being able to make good and useful decisions for yourself is very very important. The next thing I told her is being an opportunist is very important in life too. At least it was for me. When I tried to plan for 10 or 20 years of my life at around 20 this didn't work at all. So, I realized that being more in the moment and looking for opportunities worked the best for me too. Life is what happens while you are always making other plans. You have NO IDEA what is actually going to happen in your life. Could anyone ever have predicted Trump would become president or how much chaos one president could cause in everyone's life worldwide? No. Never in a million years.
So, because of all the unknown variables the best you can do is to pray and be pragmatic and kind and opportunist and helpful to everyone you can.
Part of looking for opportunities is that if you are helpful to people along the way you never know what opportunities will come through one of them.
So, be kind and helpful to both friends and enemies because over time: "Friends become enemies and enemies become friends". This is an old Tibetan Saying.
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