For the longest time I refused to accept any Facebook friend requests from people I work with. I had a very rigid social media policy. None. Not even from my best friend.
I just felt it wasn’t appropriate and felt it would lead down a path of very blurred lines. I wanted work to be work and my personal life to be separate from that.
And then life happened. Good life happened.
Over the past couple of months I opened my mind and my heart to welcoming people into my life. To making new friends and deepening existing friendships. Because I want to feel and live life to the fullest and want to share the joys, and sometimes sorrows, with good, kind, fun, funny, caring people.
And over time I’ve realized that to allow people into my life, I need to be able to be vulnerable. To have truly great relationships, I have to get comfortable with being vulnerable. With letting people in and letting them see me for who I really am.
Suddenly I realized that to live a full and awesome life, I can’t be afraid of everything and everyone. I can’t be afraid of getting hurt. I can’t be afraid of being vulnerable. I can’t be afraid of the lines getting blurred.
Life is messy and the lines get blurred.
Relationships are like weeds that grow in the cracks in the sidewalk or the tree that grows amongst the rocks on the side of a cliff. If you let them, they just happen. The aren’t always convenient and perfectly coiffed. But often those are the relationships that grow the strongest and weather the most difficult trials. Because they were hardy from the jump. But you have to let them happen. You have to let them grow.
So yesterday I began to be Facebook friends with my real-life friends, who coincidentally, I also work with.
It’s not about Facebook, though. Really it’s about opening my heart and my life to all the goodness and fun that my friends have to offer and the joy that they bring to my life.
And suddenly I see what an amazingly awesome life I have, filled with good friends.
Thank goodness I realized that life is messy and sometimes the lines get blurred.