5:00PM
I saw my neighbor while I was out playing basketball. He’s maybe 20 years older than me and came back to visit his parents. I probably haven’t seen him in 20 years. How does one catch up on 20 years in just a few minutes of chatting at 6 feet distance?
Having the conversation with him helped me realize that I’ve met many people over these years and how distant I’ve become from the people I knew as a kid. Hell, even how distant I’ve become from the people I went to college with. Despite having all of these ways to connect with people over the internet, for some reason I have either delayed, pushed away, or haven’t thought about reconnecting with the people who knew me growing up.
I mean, I’m not completely disconnected. I’m still very close with 4 friends with whom I went to high school, and then play online games occasionally with about 4 or 5 others. From college, I probably only talk to one person, my old roommate, and only here and there. Oh, and a few that I talk to once every year or two.
Maybe this falls into the surprise category. I want to surprise them with the final version of the perfect story, not wanting them to see me in process. Or on the opposite end, I fear the awkward conversation where it’s not about how little I’ve done, but actually about how much I’ve done and how they may feel embarrassed they haven’t done that much. It happened the other day when I saw my old friend’s little sister, who is now a mother with two kids. She seemed to feel embarrassed that she hadn’t traveled to Africa or lived outside of our hometown. I told her that it’s OK, I feel embarrassed a bit that I don’t have kids and aren’t married. We all do cool things, just differently cool things.
Maybe I can handle these conversations better than I thought. I mean, after all, isn’t one of the main reasons I started working on all this stuff is because I wanted to be able to have a conversation with anyone in the world about anything, including how I felt, even about them? That’s at least what I’ve been telling myself on and off for eight years. Feels right.
I think that this book can be a nice excuse to reach out to people again, people I haven’t talked to in years. People who knew me as a kid, relatives, teachers, parents of friends, coaches, and so many others. Goodness, we meet a lot of people in life, don’t we.
Part of me likes not connecting with people on Facebook or other platforms because when I do see them, we have so much to say to each other. Everything is new and surprising! At the same time, realistically how many of these people am I going to see again, and if I do, how often will I see them? Will I run into that same, “Oh, good to see you! What have you been up to for the last…20 years?”
Perhaps connecting digitally, while not as exciting as the in-person reveal, can help maintain the contact. Actually, something that I’ve noticed is that even if I chat with someone online, when I start talking to them on the phone, it feels as if it’s a new conversation with a different person. Same after talking on the phone and seeing in person.
So maybe reconnecting won’t ruin the in-person fun.
5:10PM
