Reflections on a reunion

Nearly a week after my high school reunion, I find myself reflecting on what I learned. The major revelation I came away with was definitely a surprise.

If you think of the people you knew in high school, the ones you were close to, and those other ones you didn’t quite connect with, you can sketch out a kind of “distance function” between you and anyone else in your class.

Now let’s skip forward many years, and throw those same people together. One would think that time would be the great transformer of souls, the thing that forces up to level up, that tests us, that in the worst cases leaves us abandoned on the side of the road.

But that’s not at all what I found. I encountered the same people that I had known many years before, wieh the same essential energies and personalities. Those I had felt a strong connection with at sixteen, I still felt connected with now. And those who had seemed odd or slightly unfathomable to me, continued to feel that way even after all these years.

My take-away from this is that we all remain, throughout our lives, who we are. At our core we are the same person from early childhood until old age. The life long journey we embark upon, as exciting and varied as it is, does not, in any essential way, change this fundamental truth.

3 thoughts on “Reflections on a reunion”

  1. I came to the reunion because I felt enough time had passed since high school that I would enjoy seeing old friends and be able to handle reminders of some disappointments. And for the most part I was right. and you are right too – people today are the same people they were back then, for better, and in some cases, for worse. It was a good reunion.

  2. Its funny. I really had no intention of going because I felt like it is impossible to stroll back down memory lane with any level of satisfaction, coupled with the fact that I felt and if I didn’t hang with most of these people in 197whatever that 2016 wasn’t the time to start- Im so glad that my arm got twisted enough to go and meet up with you folks. It was amazing,scary, exhilarating, and overall a lot of fun and I couldn’t agree with what you said more. It was great to reconnect with the people that mattered (and they know who they are! I felt like I found the puzzle pieces that have been missing for a lot of years. I hope that we all make it a point to stay in touch!

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