After 30 years

I have long avoided reunions of any sort.

For the most part I find it embarrassing to be face to face with someone who knows so much about me, but whom I can’t recognize or who’s name I can’t recall.

To add insult to injury, these people seem to relish in your discomfort by needling you and saying: “you can’t remember me, can you?” Maybe that explains why we’ve blocked them out of our memory. 

Then there’s the inequality of life, and reunions, that displays those who have “made it” and those “barely getting by”. By and large, it’s quite uncomfortable to be around the “loud and the proud” just as it is painful to be beside the “humbled or defeated”.

It is during reunions that I realize why some people question, how we start up conversations by asking what people do for a living. As one critic pointed out, “are we truly defined or established by the ‘job’ we hold or what we do for a living?”

I don’t know how fashionable being “unemployed” is in today’s economy, but I know for sure that, for those out of a job, the question “what do you for a living, or what’s your job now?” is like being forced to walk after you’ve stepped on a sea urchin.

Beside’s which, what about the men and women who have committed themselves to be mothers first or to be the househusband? Where in the social ladder do they end up for sacrificing their dreams, so that the next generation can have a life worth living?

Perhaps the first right question at a reunion would be to ask: “How are you?” and not “what’s your job, now?” or “How many wives or partners have you had in 30 years?”

* * *

I wonder what it is that attracts us to “reunions”?

Quite honestly I often get the impression that somewhere at birth or during our stay in High School or College, someone must have implanted a chip that makes us respond to reunions, the same way moths fly towards the flame.

What is the driving force that would make us expose ourselves, yet again, to memories both good and bad? Is it some vain hope that somehow after 30 years, what we left in the past would look better or be less painful than we recall? I guess that is the optimist in all of us.

Why do we risk the chance knowing that a reunion might exhume the remains of past loves and fleeting romances? Do we need an affirmation that we married the right person or are we gluttons for punishment and seeking yet another confirmation that we missed “The Love Boat” of our life?

Why on earth would you want to ruin the beautiful images stored in your cranial hard drive, of your past lusts and past crushes, by updating them with their latest versions that have been “mega-biting” on food for the last 30 years? To top it all, it’s like joining Fatties anonymous, after years of pretending to be in shape, you literally join the “herd”.

I am tempted to say there is wisdom in the phrase “Curiosity killed the cat”, because that is what reunions often do. It kills what we imagined the past to be, how we remember someone looked like, and it obliterates any romantic notions and memories we may have been harboring for three decades or so. 

However, there are good things to learn from reunions.

You learn that there was great economic and gastronomic wisdom when you staged “potluck” parties then, and even now. Back then you all contributed to the pot because very few of you had the money to pay for a feast. 

Today it makes perfect sense to hold “potluck” parties because after 30 years we all have one special food we have mastered to cook with pride, and if you can’t cook, you certainly have some money and know were to buy it! You also discover that when you gather 32 people after 30 years, you find yourself in a “foodies” paradise.

Thirty years later, you discover that people have discarded illusions and ambitions and replaced them with kids and reality. Sex is no longer the big thing or taboo, because now you can only talk about it.

During reunions you experience a spiritual awakening and discover that there is God and God is fair. Those who had much in college now have less hair in life. You discover many of the heartthrobs have become perfect DH specimens commonly known as Deforestation of the Head. 

Yes we’ve all gained more than wisdom through the years. We gained weight, we’ve put on the problems of others and we’ve gained responsibility, spouses, children and in-laws.

But surprisingly, we keep a little corner just for ourselves. That’s were we’ve kept the memories, the jokes, the hurts and some dreams that could never come true. And when the call comes through, we fly to the light yet again because it’s not just a reunion with classmates; it’s a reunion with our “Self” that we left behind.

Even in a crowded room of 32 schoolmates from three decades past, we eventually meet up with our “self” from the past and we get to ask our “selves” the questions that really matter:

“Have you been true to the calling, have you become as good as you always thought yourself to be? Have you made a big difference or did you just make a lot of money? Were your critics correct, or did you prove them wrong? Have you fulfilled what you imagined God wanted you to do?”

In another “reunion” that took place in Holland, my wife’s classmate asked a question that is rarely asked with absolute seriousness: “Did your dreams come true?”

Thank God, they have.