Do you ever notice that when you are on social networks you seem to seek people out that you only have the most tentative of connections with? I’m as bad as anyone. I’m speaking of this after a true friend added me yesterday on Facebook. It’s someone I messaged back and forth a few times with, and may mildly keep in touch with. After that, I went through my graduating class and added more people. Some people I’m interested in from afar, some I’m interested in communicating with, and some I have a passing interest in. I also didn’t add a few that I wouldn’t be interested in, but I would friend them back if they connected to me.
I was thinking afterward though that just like high school, some of these bonds and connections are true and some of them are just a passing fancy where no communication will ever really flow from one end to the other. I see people that I know vaguely, I’m at least proper enough to stick with people I actually had classes or conversations with. Some of these people only have friends that they went to high school with. Some may be the only ones.
Looking at the sociological dynamics is very interesting. Some people are extremely close with those they went to high school with. I’m not, mostly since I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of people. Moving to Oregon also put a bit more space between me and the rest of the class, and even now I live about sixty miles away – though I play in the community band in that town.
Even the bullies, the preps, or the prima donnas from school, I wish them no ill will. There was a moment in time I was worried about my standing in the social pecking order, but I think I left that behind when I was an underclassman in high school. I’m someone that cares about my immediate social circles and not those memories of people over a decade old. If they however wish to know me more in-depth than my blog posts allow I’m happy to converse with them, maybe even have a coffee – but things won’t be like they were. Because of that, I don’t judge them by the way they are.
Time has changed most if not all of us. I’m sure some of them all hang out with the same people from high school and get drunk every night with the same people they drank with when they were underage- but I hope the majority of them have moved from that. That their dreams have been realized. We have this spark of a moment in time where we had a shared experience and it bounds us. Not everyone is brave enough to face that moment in their lives, some people want to leave it behind them and never return back. I’m sure those people I’ll never be able to reconnect with those, the saddest part a couple of them were some of my best friends.
To the future and the past, we move forward solid in our own steps. The echoes of the past follow behind us as we make our way into the unknown.
