Faded Memories of Days Gone By

I've been thinking of high school a lot lately. Next year will be 30 years since I graduated. By any estimation, that is a lot of water under the bridge. In fact, that water has flowed under the bridge, downstream to the river, down the river to the ocean, and has swirled around the globe and up and down, to and from many clouds since then.

 

I suppose the motivation is nostalgic, but I can't help but consider that there are darker forces at work. In my life, the darker forces are always there, if only lurking in the shadows. The dark voices always ask "What if?". Second guessing is never a good thing. It causes you to call into question past decisions, none of which you can go back and amend even if you wanted to. Second guessing causes you to perversely consider if things could be better had you made this decision instead of that one. You look across the fence at that brown grass and somehow it seems greener than your own lush lawn.

 

My high school years were unremarkable. It wasn't my "glory days". When I get together with high school friends, I don't want to talk about then. I want to talk about now. The best things in my life have happened since high school, so why would I want to go back? I don't know why I listen to that voice when it speaks.

 

High school friendships are transitory. You are there together, not out of choice or preference, but thrown together like cellmates in a prison. It's no wonder to me that high school friendships don't often endure. There are some of my classmates that I haven't spoken to for nearly 30 years. I wouldn't consider that a friendship that needs resurrecting, but I find myself occasionally wondering what happened to these people. I wonder how life has been for them. Good or bad. Success or failure. Happiness or sorrow. I know for a fact that many of my classmates have passed through that grown up land of marriage and divorce, some repeatedly. Some have trod a darker path and have seen time in prison.

 

You emerge from high school with grand ideas of changing the world or accomplishing great things only to find you merge in with the rest of the adult population. You see neither the world nor great accomplishments. Thirty years later, you look back and wonder, second-guessing. You look back on a life of mediocrity where you've not excelled at anything. Perhaps you've done passable work on a number of levels, but nothing noteworthy. Failed relationships haunt you. Aborted relationships, those falling short of commitment, haunt you more. For those thinking these thoughts, I say this:  "Turn around, dummy, and watch where you're going!" The past is that water under the bridge, gone forever.

 

We put stock in what we perceive to be the stuff of happiness and contentment, never thinking that happiness and contentment are things you make, not things you find. Your happiness, your contentment--these are things that you can fabricate, but only for yourself. You must use the raw materials in your life at any one moment. There are no missing ingredients you should go out and find. They are all there, all the time. 

 

There is no path in the past that will lead me to happiness, contentment or a better life than I have now. The best path for me is the one that I've been on for the past 30 years. All other roads lead to perdition. I may continue to think about my classmates from time to time. I may even wander into one now or then and strike up another transitory acquaintance. It may be that some days I turn into a dark alley and wonder how life would be had I made that fabled other choice. But, I hope and pray I can quickly turn around and step back into the light. More than this, I hope my grip is always firm on what I have. I never, ever want to let go of this to reach for the mirage of "what if".