Reunions
Welcome to another week in Bogworld.
This is going to be a weird week for me. This week I travel back to my home town for my high school reunion. Lets just say its been a long time since I was back in high school. The last reunion I went to involved a boat cruise out into Lake Superior which forced my old classmates to mingle. The alternative would have been an icy swim back to shore. And as it turned out, that worked. I got to reconnect with a lot of amazing people again.
Reunions are strange. I mean lets think back to high school. They say those are the best times of our lives but really can you think of a more awkward twisted messed up time in your entire life as your high school years? Aside from your college years of course. But then college was really just high school with a little more alcohol and sex.
A five year reunion is a bad idea. Its when most of us are just out of college and no one has really accomplished much of anything with their lives. The “partiers” are now called alcoholics. And the vast majority of folks five years out of high school are considering or already have moved back into their parents house.
The ten year reunion is a little more interesting. Everyone in their late 20s. Everyone still young enough to be considered fun and maybe by now people are beginning to really figure out what they want to be when they grow up. They haven’t grown up yet. But now they have a little more direction in their lives and they know what they should be trying to do by the time they become 30.
The 20 year reunion. Everyone is either married or divorced. The over achievers might be on their second or third marriage. We’ve all put on pound over the years that make us all secretly think “Where the hell did all this extra fat come from?” and “What the hell am I doing with my life?” If I remember right, there was a lot of envy as we shared what each of us have done over the last ten years. “Really? You spent five years exploring the Amazon? Awesome!” And the Amazon explorer was probably thinking “Wow, that guy got to spend the last six years in a clear air conditioned office cubical! What I would have given to be him!”
I suspect this coming reunion, my 30th, will be spent talking about our second or third careers. More marriages and divorces. Kids and step kids. And this time around I suspect there will be more classmates lost to death. I am not looking forward to that. This time around there is bound to be some thought about all our mortality. Statistically its just inevitable that some of my old friends will not be there this time around. But hints at one’s mortality is a good thing. Death is life’s kick in the pants to get the things done that you want to do. Maybe reunions are a less final way of reminding us that the clock is ticking. Make those moves. Do those things in your bucket list while you can still enjoy them.
Me? I’m very fortunate. I’ve always found ways of doing the things I really love to do and being with the people I truly care about. At these moments where we measure our lives is there really anything more we could ask for than that?