Old School Days

I've been chatting, or more accurately emailing with an old friend from high school and uni days. It's amzing how much things change, and yet also how little things change. This person used to be one my good friends, but yet we sort of drifted apart during uni and eventually even lost touch. But as fate would have it, we've once again met up.

I'm going to meet this friend soon for dinner just to catch up. But from our email chats, it's like no time has passed in one sense, and also like a lot of time has passed in another. A lot has also change in terms of our lives, but there are still some constants, which are the shared memories that we have of our old school days. We both reminisce about the good old days (we must be getting old) and how much fun it used to be. We discussed why we sort of drifted apart and it's just due to people moving on. But now that we've met up again, I think this time we will keep in touch for sure.

Back when you're at school, you get thrown together with other kids that are your age. You will be friends with some just because you are constantly in the same environment. It's after you leave school that your friendships get tested. Once you change geographical locations and also meet other people in the big wide world, it's when you really know who you friends are. Having said that, sometimes you stay in touch with people who really aren't your friends, but that is extremely rare. I, for one, would not actively seek to communicate with people just for the sake of it. Why waste time on people you don't care about when you can use that time for people you do care about.

But sometimes, like in this instance, we just drifted apart without realising it. Only after you realise the lost do you fully understand what you let go. However, the lesson is to not let it happen again.

One funny thing that has come out of our email conversations is gossip about our old school friends. It turns out that a lot of people didn't get along. It's strange how the bleeding obvious is so hard to pick at the time. The saying about how it's so much clearer when you're not involved in something is so true. Now that we are wiser, we can look back and really see who the real friends were. The others just happened to be there due to circumstance. Apparently, there was a lot of fighting and bitching that went on that I didn't know about. It happened less with us guys than the girls, but it didn't mean we were all friends. I haven't kept in touch with all my old high school and uni friends because I've realised that a lot of them never were my friends. I actually find some of them to my disliking as I've gotten older and seen them for what they are.

I've carried my slightly tougher stance of people at work. I can't even be bothered wasting my time talking to fake people at work. I don't need them to like me. I will be civil to them and work with them, but apart from that, we just happened to be chucked together for a moment in time doing a common task for money. There are some people at work though that I do feel are real friends and who I will give my attention to. So far, I've gotten to know quite a few of them for a number of years now and I still like them, so that's a good sign that they are friends. Whether I will still keep in touch with them when I leave this job is unknown. I suspect I will keep in touch with a few of them.