Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
I've written before about how people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
For a friend of mine back home, it's sadly always for either a reason or a season but never for a lifetime ... Not yet anyway.
As a girl growing up, her parents used to affectionately call her the collector of lame ducks because every new friend she brought home was a fixer-upper, emotionally-damaged in some way and in need of a friendly ear or comforting hug.
She was always so kind and gentle with them that they just seemed to gravitate her way and she always made the time to be there for them, even when it meant not having any time for herself.
And, then when they found their confidence again, they moved on and found other friends to hang out with, at which stage the cycle would start all over again.
Now that she's all grown up, things haven't changed all that much, except the lame duck friends are no longer and she has a great bunch of girlie girls that love spending time with her and turn to her for advice all the time - I know, I do. But when it comes to her relationships with men, she's right back in lame duck territory.
Don't get me wrong, they're mostly all very nice guys - or at least everything I've been able to gather from this distance would seem to imply they are.
Funny, romantic and kind towards her but each and every one of them brings with them baggage that would make Victoria Beckham's excess-luggage budget groan at the seams!
Whether it was the recent death of a close friend/family member, the recovery from some kind of substance abuse or an abusive parent that left them emotionally scared in some way, guys with problems are attracted to her like magnets.
Talking to her a few days ago, she was asking me why all the men in her life seemed to fall head over heals in love with her and then one day down the line, walk out of her life.
The strangest part of it all though is that none of them ever seem to fall out of love with her. They simply move on, still claiming that no other woman has ever accepted, understood, cared about, or for, them as much as she did.
They all seem to agree that she's loving, giving and self-sacrificing. Added to which, she's self-sufficient, confident (to the outside, anyway) and easy on the eye.
They love her, they leave her, they all stay in touch and admit to missing her. And, while she always takes the time to grieve over her lost love before moving on with her life, they all seem to want to come back just that little bit too late.
It used to be that I thought maybe she had a subconscious need to look after people, either as a means filling some unknown void in her life or maybe that she had problems of her own that she couldn't deal with and kept hidden from the rest of us and that was why she was always so open to others like that too - at the end of the day, whether we know it or not, we attract what we put out, good energy attracts good things into our lives; just as anger or sadness attract negative energy - but then I realised that she was one of those people that no matter what goes wrong in her life (and she hasn't had it easy), she picks herself up, dusts herself off and starts over again with a smile on her face and a surprisingly positive attitude.
Then, for the longest time, I used to wonder whether the fact that she always seemed to know exactly the right thing to do or say at any given time was somehow intimidating to the man in her life at the time.
I thought maybe the fact that she was able to set their wrongs right and build them back up with the minimal amount of fuss was somehow scary for a guy, who is genetically programmed to be the problem solver.
Reading this, it sounds as if she's a saint, perfect in everyway and as her friend I'd have to agree but as a realist I'm fully aware that she has her faults like anyone-else.
She's had more than her fair share of troughs to go along with her peaks and she's as likely to make a mistake, get angry or break a heart or two of her own as the rest of us.
She's the first to admit she has no idea what she's doing or which direction her life should be going in.
Like the rest of us, she'd like to think that there has to be a purpose to her life or at the very least a reason for being here other than simply existing, going through normal everyday life until illness or old age claims her and it was at that point that it hit me.
Most of us think of a real purpose in life as some sort of calling to help others, whether it's working in a job that saves lives (fireman, policeman or sea rescue), charity work (hospices, aid worker or raising money for cancer) or just happening to be at the right place at the right time to catch a baby falling from a fifth floor window but a real purpose is basically something that you can do to help another person in need and maybe her reason for being here is quite simply what she's been doing naturally all her life.
Doctors heal broken bones and if you believe in the spiritual path, gurus set you on it so why would it be such a stretch of the imagination to believe that some people's purpose in life is to lift the spirits of the people they come into contact with? Is there any greater calling in life?
