I truly don’t believe there is such a thing as “right person, wrong time.” This is an age-old debate that brings up numerous perspectives and opinions, all of which are intriguing and valid. I have just never gelled with the idea that you can meet a person who theoretically ticks off all your boxes and the only thing standing in your way is “timing.”

I believe people are relative to their own timelines. You are evolving and changing and growing at every moment, on every conceivable level-physical, emotional, spiritual. If you were to be plucked from your current moment, with your current knowledge and experience and put into a different time in your life, you would not be just the same person but in a different setting. We are shaped largely by our environments. It would transform you into a different version of yourself. We are mapped out with time as our backdrops. We don’t exist without it.

With this thought, that means that everyone else is changing and growing with the same capability as you are. When you meet someone, you have no idea where they are in the trajectory of their life. They are specific to their own ever-changing timeline, as you are. So, if the world has aligned so you could meet this person and the only thing standing in your way is “timing,” I think a re-evaluation is necessary. Timing is exactly what brings people together in the first place. It can’t be the thing stopping you.

Waiting on the possibility that there may be a singular moment sometime in the future where you could meet this person again and things would work out is wishful thinking at best, and a huge disservice to the universe’s inner workings at worst. Time is not linear. I see time as cyclical, as pattern based. Things shift and rearrange and we do too along with it. I think we need to put our trust in the universe’s timing and understand that you were meant to meet that person at the time you did. We need to take every person as they are in the moment and in context. People do not exist in a vacuum.

Yearning for the “what-ifs” is detrimental. A load is lifted off your shoulders once you come to understand that everything has purpose behind it and you are not meant to decipher it all. Trust that that person you met was just not meant to be in your life. And hey, if you do end up meeting them again, know that you are shaking hands with a new person when you do.