Joy in the Moment

By Joy Pape

When I moved to New York City, my cousin who lived here at the time, told me friendships are different here. I don’t know that they are so different, but my personal experience has been that the friends I’ve made here move more often than those from my past hometowns.

You may likely now have your lifetime of people you consider friends, many of whom you think of often, but you are no longer in touch with. You may wonder what happened to those people? How are they? What happened to our friendship? On and on it can go.

With the continual growth and ubiquity of the internet, it’s relatively easy to find out about these people who were once in our lives. Easy, and often time consuming. It can be refreshing to touch base again, or it can be a situation that can ‘open a can of worms’ you didn’t expect.

It’s different for all of us. Some are very busy with families, school, full-time jobs, or other activities that take up their time. Others have more time to be able to and want to do the search.

I am reminded of people who tell me they don’t have time to take care of what they need to do for themselves, but they do seem to take the time to ‘play around’ on the internet. Someone said to me the other day, “When someone comes to mind, I ask myself, do I have 15 minutes to reach out to that person?”

I’ve come to hold on to that saying about there being a reason and a season for the times I’ve had with people, including my friends. Even if I haven’t seen them in a long time, I still consider them my friends. It doesn’t mean anything was wrong if we’re no longer in touch.

We met for a reason, there are things we both learned with and from each other, and hopefully enjoyed together. And…

We met for a season. The amount of time for that season may have been short or it may still be in season.

I send good thoughts their way.

I take care of what’s needed in the moment so I can be healthy, body, mind and spirit, which includes having joy in the moment.

I hope the same for you.

About the author: Joy Pape, FNP, CDCES, CFCN is a board-certified nurse practitioner who believes in and practices wholistic health and healing. She is a board-certified diabetes care and education specialist, and foot care nurse. She practices at the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Presbyterian. She also has a private practice located in the West Village.