Last week I was thinking about people I knew before I moved here. Not friends, as such, but people I worked with, people I saw at social events, even students. Some of them I see online. It's great to see ex-students, for example, getting older, finding careers, getting married and having children. Not all the people I knew back then are online or in my friendship group.
I found myself wondering how an old student was getting on, and I realised that for me that person is still about 16 years old. I've not seen or heard anything about them since I last taught them, so in my mind they haven't aged at all. They're not going to be like that now, of course, but that is how I see them.
This happens to everyone when we move out of their circle. We preserve them in time, at the age and stage of life we knew them. The teacher at school is still 35 and eating a packed lunch out of a paper bag, the neighbour is still listening to the Allman Brothers at high volume, the student never quite leaves school.
But we move on. We grow, evolve, change. We gather experience and learn. Misfortune occurs and our worldview alters, and sometimes our personalities. Careers advance or change, children are born, grey hair appears. Decades pass, and my high-school friend is still a sixteen year old lover of football, not the CEO of a tech company.
Surely there is someone in Australia who remembers me as the twenty-five year old colleague, the 40 year old student, the 50 year old teacher. They have no reason to update that picture, and I can guarantee they wouldn't even be able to imagine much of what I do these days.
Soon I will be catching up with an old friend, my best friend from High School. We last spent any real time together when I was around nineteen. Over the years we bumped into each other occasionally, and it was great to chat and laugh. He's not on social media, but we've kept in minimal contact through his wife. Now they're coming here, and we'll be catching up over dinner. Our first proper catchup since the early 80s.
I know what he's been doing, I know where his life took him. I have some idea of what he's doing now. But to me there is still so much of him that is the eighteen year old friend who shared so much time with me.
I'm really looking forward to it.
