World is so small...

"Sister!!!! Sissss teeer!!!"

When I realised the desperate calling was for me, it was already too late to react. Someone grabbed my hand hardly and hugged me strongly.
"What the h......!"
"Oh My God.....!"
The friend who I was really wanted to meet while we were travelling in Switzerland was standing in front of me and hugging me in a city where we came for a trip for only two days after 25 years. How can I explain about this unbelievable reunion with her? 

We met and lived together as flatmates in Sydney 8 years ago and she left Australia after getting married to a Swiss man about 5 years ago. Since then we haven't been in touch. How can I excuse my ignorance about the relationship or friendship with her? All I can say is we were too busy to survive and settle in our new country, Australia then so we didn't realise how important things we were missing at that moment. Simply, we were young and foolish. We were only focusing on our future career and getting permanent residency to stay in Australia at the time, and dismissed relationship/friendship with others thoughtlessly.

When we organised this long trip, when we decided to stop over in Zurich, Switzerland, her existence suddenly popped up into my mind and I really wanted to meet her. I was not sure why I started thinking about her after 5 years passed by but as a middle aged woman who feels surrendered by age, I have been feeling hungry for warm and close relationship with people. I wanted to know how people who I knew before are doing nowadays and she was one of them.

Unfortunately, when we were in Zurich, she was away from Switzerland to Korea to visit her parents so I had to give up the hope. What kind of faith it could be! I met the friend, who I wanted to meet in Switzerland, in the middle of street, in front of crossing, in a small city in Korea today. If I didn't go to the city after 25 years, if we didn't ask our tour guide for stopping the bus on the spot where we didn't plan to visit, if we didn't stand and talk on the spot at that time, if she didn't decide to come to the city for a day trip, if her husband didn't recognise my husband's face under the sunset light, if......, we wouldn't be able to see each other. This incredible and unbelievable reunion offered me time to think about how world is small and how old friendships are valuable to our life. I was extremely happy to see her and her family accidentally 10,000 km away from our home. 

My mother used to tell me that according to Buddhism , this kind of unexpected meeting can happen only after more than thousand times of meeting in our previous lives so we should take any relationship sincerely and I was very impressed by the story. As it is hard to forget what you learnt/believed when you were a kid, I couldn't take our meeting as a simple accident. I felt we were meant to meet each other any how. One more funny thing we have found out while we started talking about our trip was that only one extra day trip we made outside of Zurich was where they actually live. How amazing it is?

I organised one more chance to see each other in Seoul as I didn't let this faith go away and as I don't know when we can meet each other again. We had a chat about many things about our past which we all remember so can laugh together and also current life that we all can share so we can know each other's life bit deeper. Non stop giggling and talking made us not to realise that we have been talking for more than 4 hours. I feel sorry for talking too much (as usual) but I couldn't stop enjoying the time with them and knowing their life in Switzerland. 

Friendship that I didn't take seriously when I was younger suddenly became far more precious and valuable to me. Especially, having a good relationship with people who have similar life experiences in the past so we can share our homesickness has been one of the most missing things for both of us who live in the new country. So, this meeting definitely helped out for curing our craving for the friendship. 

After 4 hours of talking, unfortunately we had to say good bye to them as we needed heading to the airport for our next destination, Shanghai, China. We swapped our contact details and promised to keep in touch. I am not sure when we can meet up with each other again. All I can hope for are happy life to them until we meet each other and keeping touch with each other. On the way back to the airport, my husband and I continuesly talk about them and what we were talking about for the 4 hours. We both couldn't hide our joyment from being with good friends. My feet were lighter and my heart was full of gentle warmth.