Everything Has An Expiry Date
Everything in this world has an expiry date. Literally everything you see has a mechanism through which it dies, and you know that in advance. Thousands of years ago, Hindu scriptures described the world as cyclical.
Everything that has been created will eventually come to an end. Creation and destruction are inseparably linked, each giving rise to the other in an endless cycle. Some things take longer to die, while others perish early.
If you extend that logic and apply it to human beings, you begin to see that everything that happens to us is cyclical as well. Time and our emotions move through recurring phases of happiness and sadness. The cycle has never remained still for long. Of course, time is relative, which is why sadness often feels longer than happiness. Even our memories are wired in such a way that we gradually forget the past and continue participating in this endless cycle of creation and destruction.
The same is true of our relationships. Every relationship in your life has an expiry date. Friends you once believed would remain your closest companions eventually drift away. The closeness fades as you evolve through life. You make new friends, only for those relationships to fade into the distance as you continue to grow. The connections you formed felt profound in that moment, but with time you realise that preserving them is no longer the same. So they die a natural death.
You marry your college sweetheart, but over time you realise the warmth is no longer there. Bitterness has seeped into the relationship. For some, there is no bitterness, yet the relationship gradually becomes dull, which is also a form of death. The people may still remain, but the relationship they once shared no longer exists in its original form. No matter who enters your life, no relationship remains untouched by time. Everything has to die, and that is the only certainty.
You might argue that there are exceptions. There are not. Any relationship that appears to have outlasted its expiry has simply died and been reborn through different phases of life. Or it has transformed into something where complaints exist but are quietly set aside. The shape of the relationship has changed from what it once was.
Meeting the same childhood friend years later and still sharing a deep bond does not mean the relationship never died. It means it evolved into something different, something that remains meaningful to both of you. The people remained the same, but the relationship did not.
This is not a nihilistic view of life but a more optimistic one. If everything is destined to die a natural death, if everything has an expiry date, if everything is temporary, wouldn't you want to make the most of what you have? People die. Metals corrode. Water evaporates. Planets collapse. Stars burn out. Even the universe may one day fade into nothingness. Only the timelines are different.
Human relationships are no different. Make the most of every relationship while it exists in its present form. Years later, the same people may still be with you, but the relationship you share with them will almost certainly have become something else. Appreciate it for what it is today, because tomorrow it will be different.