Comfort in the previous

This entire fall has been one long reunion. It started with the official thing, college homecoming, with a trickle of long-lost friends who had connections to other, longer-lost friends. For weeks after, I was corresponding with people I hadn't seen or heard from in three, five, ten years.

Then there's the whole web 2 thing. I've been largely passive, seeking out only a few people. To tell the truth, I've set up profile-bait more as an experiment to see what The Kids These Days Are Doing, since it's part of my job to care. A lot. The longer my line is out, though, the more I've heard from all sorts of old acquaintances.

I've reached two conclusions based on this happy deluge from the past:

1) Regardless of the irreconcilable differences that made you part company with friends when you were 22, the primary emotion felt universally by all parties when you reconnect is relief. At my ten-year high school reunion, I was alarmed to see that everyone slipped back into their high school roles immediately--the bully, the nerd, the snobby. Lots of snobs.

At my college reunion, my male friends in particular reverted to the joking, the non-stop strings of profanity offensive to all cultures and creeds, but there was something different, too. They had aged, and it suited them well. More than anything, they were confident. Their success in life had helped them relax, if only a little, and it made everything more pleasant.

The slights and disrespect we suffered from each other in college were trivial or forgotten completely. Forgiveness flowed freely, along with the alcohol, but it was sincere. No one wanted to be mad any more.

2) There is an unexpected and deep comfort in the previous. I've been corresponding with a friend with whom I've had minimal contact in the last six years. We write each other most days now. It's hard to believe how easily we picked up the rhythm. The first few times he wrote, it surprised me how much he sounded the same, just in the way he worded his messages.

Of course we've both changed in the intervening years, and it's easy to buy into an illusion that we still know each other so thoroughly. Still, the feeling of comfort, of sheer "glad to hear from you today," can only come from a long-standing friendship. It's the way you trust someone when you know you've got nothing to prove and nothing to hide.

I feel it in stark contrast to some of my newer friendships, where we maintain only the illusion of honesty and intimacy. We're telling each other what appears to be our life stories, but in reality we're editing the details. Is that what happens as we get older and have more to hide and more to lose?