Last Monday, I walked into the Bagels & Joe on Pioneers Blvd. in Lincoln at 7:30 in the morning to the smell of burnt bagels. Not exactly the sweet cream cheese and coffee aroma I was expecting to walk into. I had already miscommunicated with my friends about which location we were even meeting at, been awake since before the sun and knew that my time with my friends would be cut short by my upcoming 10 a.m. natural resources class, so the only thing keeping my attitude up was the prospect of seeing my friends—my best friends—friends I so desperately wanted to see that I even skipped my 9 a.m. for an extra hour with them (sorry Eric).
I sat down at a booth that had room for all four of us, with my sweater covering my nose so I wouldn’t inhale any more of the burnt bagel smell. I looked outside to see my first friend arrive. She goes to school 300 miles away, but decided to come home for the weekend after a long and tiring week. I think she needed that hug more than I did. My second friend arrived, and I hugged her too, but I would see her next Sunday anyway.
Finally, my third “friend” arrived. I put that in quotes only because she’s more of a mentor—our old youth group leader who’s grown into a friend. She’s only a few years older than the rest of us, but she has far more life advice than most people her age. She was a victim of my miscommunication and had already eaten her bagel on her way over from a different Bagels & Joe location. She’s a teacher, and by some miracle, she didn’t have school that day, and by some additional miracle, we were all within driving distance of each other. We hadn’t all been together since I was in junior high.
We ate our breakfast and talked until my one friend had to leave for her 9:30 calculus class at UNL—definitely not one she wanted to skip. We said our farewells and promised to send weekly voice memos. And then we all left, and I went to class.
Life is so surreal. I know that story didn’t really have much of a point to you, but for me, it was the highlight of my week. It wasn’t just an obligatory social affair, but a life-building session. The main life advice I took from my mentor that morning is this: the only way out is through. There’s no way to get through the hard times unless you do something about them. And it hurts—trust me, I know. But it’s necessary not to dwell on the things from the past, but to learn from them. And with friends like mine, they help tremendously. Talking with them is part of the process. Ninety minutes of good conversation and I’ve reaffirmed that these are people I will always want to chat with over breakfast, even if it does smell like burnt bagels.
