Few of my favourite things.... reunions

few of my favourite things.... meeting old friends. 

Am sure we all have had occasions to meet with someone from our past. Someone from school, or from our childhood neighbourhood. Someone, with whom we lost touch, occasionally just heard about. 

Enabled by facebook these past years have provided me with an opportunity to reacquaint myself with old friends. 

Honestly, my experiences have been mixed. At some level, re engaging once again, confirmed to me, why I never kept touch. Perhaps a part of me was happy to let that relationship drift, even if meant to oblivion. What was it about that person then, that kept me at some distance, crystallised for me, several decades later. Almost like, 'been there, done that, now past that'. Time to move on. 

Yet,I have seen changes in attitudes. Someone who appeared once boisterous and boastful, now came across more amenable, perhaps influenced by life experiences that influenced both in between. 

I remember a 30 year old reunion event a few years ago. It was as if I was in a  'movie I had been before'. Then in a sudden moment of epiphany, I realised the gestalt of my being at campus: my propensity to act or not to act in a particular way. 

We never really change, we just evolve one personality covering another, all persona exists within us, waiting to be peeled, reminding me that the core of our being, is ever present. For some of us, we learn to cope with life's vissicitudes, but ever so often we get mortgaged to our past, with memories that traumatise, yet those experiences have made us even more insightful and better enabled to cope with situations that we face further in our lives. 

For many of us, we learn to 'live with' embracing those experiences as being our very own, carrying it with responsibility, not shrugging off, but being thankful, for that which was, and for that which helped us bring us to this path we now find ourselves in. 

Re unions are one my special things I treasure. Like finding a long lost 'treasure' in one's attic. It reminds you of lovely memories , made even more fonder with passage of time. All the ordinariness of it, gets edited and what is remembered is pure joy. 

The trepidation of youth, and the anxiety once held, of a future uncertain now lies behind. It like you have come to a better end of the movie and you can savour in catching up with the scenes missing, and fill in the gaps. 

You realise that life is not just what happened 'outside of you' but more importantly what happened within. Wiser now, more self assured, but with a touch of quiet pain, of sagacity born from an anvil of adversity and striving. 

Then the re union is one of deep connection, with a relatedness that is deep. There is always a measure of love in every relationship: those that fade, and the ones that grow. Both with friends and with foe: love exists even if with a meagre spec. 

And this loves surfaces, even when catching up with a failed relationship: of that which was possible. A potentiality that never occurred. That is the regret. Often that is the pain.  

As the years roll by, you realise life has been like the river: youthful at first, then more measured, then even more poised and sanguine with time. One has been in many waters, amongst many rocks, swirling areas and witnessed many banks. Often drifting round and round, the rushed and moved headlessly forward, then slowing ambling lazily with the sun overhead, moments caught with torrents, the cacaphony of thunder and zagged streaks of lighting: we seemed to have seen it all. 

And when I think this, I recall with a lump in my throat, the song sung by Frank Sinatra, I made it my way'. I made it my way. I made it my way.