Over the past few weeks there has been a real coming together of our middle school class. I have managed to reconnect with some twenty of our closest classmates spread around the world that I hadn't spoken with in as many years. Personally I found, and universally everyone reports, this reconnecting to be a uniquely warm, pleasant and exciting experience. And in all cases its almost as if the friendships never missed a beat. Why ? Naturally part of it is the urge to go back to relationships that weren't tinged with other agendas. And part of it is the broader association of these friends to a more uncomplicated, carefree and consistently happy time in our lives. But perhaps there is more. Its the what if ... Our lives happened to be shaped by chance as much by strategy. Any one of us could have ended up somewhere different if they had followed a different path, and at one stage in our lives, all paths were just as open. So as we reconnect with these early friends, we find ourselves thinking, what if - what if we had married or had kids early or late, what if gone to school here or there, or pursued that passion in art or music ... and then being able to instantly see how that path would have felt all the way through.
