I am being inundated with reunions. I find it interesting that at this stage of life there seems to be a concerted effort to visit the past. Is it because at a certain age we begin to yearn for the past? Or is it that the past is far enough away that all the anxieties of that particular time of life are now covered by a golden haze? Or in the case of some reunions, like gatherings of combat veterans, is it the urge to meet with people whose shared experiences still haunt us in old age?
My high school class finally found me a few years back, and I was informed by phone that I was the last lost class member on the list. My discovery had rounded out the record. I had led a peripatetic life style, not only as a child, but as an adult, and even I could not begin to come up with all the addresses at which I once lived. More than anything, I admired my fellow classmate (whom I did not recall) for persevering in the search. I was very honest with her, and told her that the two years I had spent at that school were not the happiest nor most rewarding part of my life. She then came back with an interesting response. She commented that all the people she had contacted had indicated that high school had been a less than happy time of life for them. I was stunned. In my memory there were many contemporaries who seemed to walk the halls of those brick buildings with a confidence and skill I lacked. Had they too felt the same way? What a difference it would have made if we had been able to be honest with one another. But in spite of this new insight, the fact still remained that the haze over those two high school years was still not golden enough for me to want to revisit it fifty years later.
However, even as I shunned the reunion, I realized I had learned something. While I had felt totally out of place in that high school, as I had just returned from two years overseas, I did not once look up from my loneliness and unhappiness to see if there was anyone else around that might be in the same boat. According to the nice high school classmate who called me, there were plenty of fellow sufferers, even those who looked as if they had the whole scene figured out.
So while it might be too late to climb Mt. Everest, or write the Great American Novel, it is not too late to make up for the choices I made those long ago years in high school. From now on I can make an effort to always look up and out, rather than down and in.