There is little doubt that we have learnt much from the coronavirus pandemic, not only about our vulnerabilities and priorities as a society, but also about our resilience. One consequence of lockdown that intrigued me, was the way that many seized the opportunity to make contact with old friends and acquaintances with whom they had lost contact over the years. But I found myself wondering why it should take an event of such magnitude and global impact to inspire us to rekindle relationships that had lapsed: what is it that keeps us from making contact with significant people from the past under normal circumstances?
Last year, I unexpectedly found out, when, out of the blue, I received an email from a friend I had made at University and with whom I had spent happy times travelling to distant lands. We had laughed lots, shared much and experienced many close shaves together. And yet our paths had eventually diverged and somehow 30 years had now slipped by unannounced! I was, of course delighted to hear from him and to learn, in the flurry of emails that followed, about the direction his life had taken with its inevitable highs and lows. And, naturally, we reminisced over some of those close shaves! But when it came to meeting up again, I found myself holding back: I was no longer the person he remembered me to be. Thirty years of life had changed all that: the recklessness of youth had given way to the sober judgment of middle age while naivete had been replaced by hard-won experience. As I cast my mind back to those early years, I barely seemed to recognise myself.
Reuniting with friends from the distant past can prove disorientating. Inevitably they will be oblivious of how much we have changed and may relate to us as though we still hold the same values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs and hopes for the future to which we once held so dearly. They may remind us of uncomfortable times we were secretly relieved to leave behind. And yet reconnecting with old friends might also bring healing and the prospect of making peace with the past. It may provide an opportunity to take stock, to be grateful for how far we have come and to celebrate how much we have changed over the years. But it may also enable us to convey a new and more fitting narrative, one that does justice to the person we have become, whatever traumas we may have endured along the way…