There is a purpose for everyone you meet.

I know. It sounds like something you’d find cross-stitched on a pillow next to a suspiciously calm fern. Stay with me.

Because some people do not enter your life gently. They arrive like a pop quiz you didn’t study for, armed with audacity and impeccable timing. These are the ones who test you. Your patience. Your wit. Your compassion. Your memory. Especially your memory. Because somehow they will contradict something they said 14 minutes ago and expect you to nod along like a polite goldfish.

It’s as if you’ve been hooked up to an emotional battery tester. Let’s see what you’ve got left. Oh, you thought you were calm? Adorable.

And then there are the teachers. Not the inspirational, movie-montage kind. No. These are the “hard lesson” professors. The ones whose syllabus is unclear and whose grading system feels personal. In the moment, nothing makes sense. It feels unfair, inconvenient, occasionally borderline offensive to your spirit.

And then annoyingly and  inconveniently later you find yourself saying, “Fine. Yes. I needed to learn that.” Growth, it turns out, is a bit of a jerk.

Some people use you. Let’s not sugarcoat it. Bah humbug. There is nothing poetic about realizing you’ve been someone else’s convenience, their emotional Uber, their unpaid intern in the economy of their needs. It stings. It lingers. It makes you question your own generosity.

But even that, especially that, is a lesson. Boundaries are not built in comfort. They are forged in those quiet moments when you realize, “Ah. This is where I should have said no.”

And then blessedly there are the ones who bring out the best in you. The optimizers. The expanders. The people who make you kinder and sharper. Around them, you feel like the highest version of yourself not because you’re performing, but because you’re finally not.

So yes, every person has a purpose.

Some are warm cups of tea.
Some are heartburn in human form. Some are mirrors.
Some are magnifying glasses.
Some are cautionary tales with excellent outfits.

But there is something to be gained from each one. Even the prickly, eye-twitch-inducing, “Lord give me strength” encounters.

Especially those.

Because if nothing else, they leave you with this: a sharper sense of who you are, what you will tolerate, and where your sunshine is stored.

And that, my friends, is a purpose worth the trouble.