Dinner in Manhattan

I have been smiling for the last hour. I am on the 6am JFK - SFO flight headed home after a few days of meetings on the East Coast; more importantly I had dinner last night with some friends from junior and high school. It was an amazingly fun evening - and difficult to describe all the many happy feelings that came with it.

For context, the last time I had met two of these good friends was some twenty-five years ago. The third, a friend from high school I had been very close to, I hadn't seen or spoken with in some fifteen years. First, for bright, energetic, mobile and committed individuals that we are, how do we let this happen to ourselves ?

Second, as the conversations through the evening unfolded, more memories came unfaded. Driving a metallic blue Fiat to school and feeling on top of the world for doing so. Watching the Asiad on the first color transmissions with a good friend in the early 80s and feeling the shared excitement. Pace bowling in a very crowded public field and the joy and frustration of cracking the ball in a few overs. Walking around in oppressingly hot and humid school afternoons for hours and then looking forward to doing it again. If life is a painting, this is the stuff that the canvas is made of, and it was good to go back and unpeel the sketches that the paint later came upon.

Finally, there is a derived happiness in seeing your close friends happy, content and settled down. The last time I had met few of them, it had been in a world very, very far away from this tony Upper East Side home we were now at. Happy marriages, adorable children, looks of professional achievements in their eyes, and hints of wonder and amazement at what life is yet to bring. If you could go back in life and pick out the best of futures for your closest friends, I doubt it could have been much better. There is joy is knowing that.