For Old Times' Sake

After recently attending my latest high school reunion - like many events last few years, delayed and rescheduled due to the pandemic - two important lessons were realized. One, there is plenty yet to learn about your dearest, closest friends you may have known for decades. Two, we can haunt and torment ourselves for years with lamentable experiences and corrosive sentiments from our past that no one cares to recall or even remembers. Leaving behind the chaos and uncertainty that has consumed the world felt nice as we reminisced and reconnected. Seemed like cherished olden days that night without having missed a beat, if only for a moment.

What is particular, yet certainly not solely unique, to my graduating class is the diversity and camaraderie among us that has existed since at least junior high school if not beyond. That youthful period is when the majority of our extended friendships, and loves, ignited that still persist and thrive today. This is not to say that we exist in a vacuum without internal stratification. While each of us might have our specific groups, there always has been a consistent and harmonious intermingling, as personally experienced and observed, beyond those confines without prejudice of demographic or status.

Considering the multiverse idea, there are infinite possibilities for the unfolding of events and our lives. Theoretically, it also means you might not exist in at least one of them - a curiously fascinating idea, no matter how fortunate or unfortunate. We may take our ‘presence’ for granted with social media that has given us an unprecedented opportunity to engage with others without being physically present - as the world discovered and adapted to during the pandemic. Yet, like anything in life, there are limits to this modern social interaction that give a higher valuation to personal, face-to-face engagement.

A lesson for humanity in general, but I leave that to you to learn accordingly.

In 1922, the world was experiencing the early throes of the Jazz Age/Roaring Twenties that developed out of the devastating ashes of “the war to end all wars.” Given the decade’s cultural and social dynamism, the French called the period Années folles (“Crazy Years”) - a fitting, if not apropos, moniker that so far could be applied to the 2020s as well for its comparable shifts and upheavals of the status quo. Perhaps 100 years from now, another generation will reflect on not only their own time but also look back on this one. Wondering what it was all about, possibly seeking inspiration and guidance from its context in relation to their own circumstance.

What legacy is left to them, and the future that it will usher, is already decided even if it is yet to be written. As the calendar again turns from another year to the next, let us give them one to commemorate rather than one to deplore.

©2022 Steve Sagarra