What If It Wasn’t the Wrong Time?
2 min read
We love the idea of right person, wrong time.
It's comforting, isn't it?
It gives us somewhere to put the stories that mattered but didn't last.
The timing was wrong.
We weren't ready.
Life got in the way.
Maybe in another life.
Maybe if we'd met five years earlier.
Or five years later.
I've probably thought some version of that more times than I'd like to admit.
But recently I started wondering...
What if it wasn't the wrong time?
What if it was exactly the time it was supposed to be?
I think we have a tendency to look at things that ended and assume something must have gone wrong.
Especially relationships.
If two people don't stay in each other's lives, we search for the mistake.
Wrong person.
Wrong decision.
Wrong timing.
But maybe not everything meaningful is supposed to become permanent.
That's an uncomfortable thought for someone like me.
I like endings.
Preferably good ones.
I'm a writer. Give me enough pages and I will at least attempt to make sense of the whole thing.
Real life is considerably less cooperative.
Sometimes someone arrives at a completely inconvenient moment.
You meet.
Something happens.
For a while, your lives overlap.
You laugh.
You learn things about each other.
You create your own ridiculous little language.
Ordinary places become your places.
Songs acquire meanings they absolutely did not ask for.
You make memories without realizing you're making them.
And then life moves.
Sometimes in the same direction.
Sometimes not.
For a long time, I thought the second possibility meant the timing had been wrong.
Now I'm not so sure.
Because when we wish we'd met someone at a different time, we imagine the same two people under better circumstances.
But five years earlier, they wouldn't have been the same people.
Five years later, they wouldn't be either.
Perhaps the versions of those two people who found each other could only have existed then.
And I like that thought.
Not everything needs a second chance to prove the first one mattered.
Not every beautiful experience needs to become a lifetime in order to have been worth living.
Sometimes it gave you a year.
A month.
A weekend.
Maybe just one extraordinary afternoon.
And perhaps that was enough.
Of course, some things end simply because they should. Some people are wrong for each other. Sometimes the timing really is terrible.
Life isn't secretly arranging everything into a beautiful novel.
Unfortunately.
But I also don't think every story that ended needs to be rewritten.
There are things in my own life I once wished had happened differently.
Words I would have said.
Others I definitely would have kept to myself.
Moments when a slightly wiser version of me would have been extremely useful.
But would I really change any of it?
I'm not sure.
Because I like the woman who came out the other side.
I like what she learned.
And, as a writer, I'm grateful for the stories.
So perhaps I'll retire right person, wrong time.
Or at least use it a little less often.
Because sometimes, maybe it was simply:
Right person.
Right moment.
Right story.
Just not forever.
And maybe there is nothing wrong with that 🤍
