Stay in Contact With Old Friends
Value your friends
With our busy lives it's easy to fall out of touch with friends. People move, they change jobs, and we enter different phases of our lives. Yet our personal relationships are what brings joy and fulfillment to us. Make time for your friends. Your old ones and new ones.
Our friends and family share our experiences with us, and we build memories with them. They know us in different parts of our lives, know our pain, know who we are beyond what our passing acquaintances ever will. I still know people I went to kindergarten with, even though I live 3,000 miles away from where I grew up. Your oldest friends are the most precious. They know the core of you. They know who you were before you learned to be an adult and put on the various masks we wear. And they reflect back to you the changes you undergo in your life.
Old friends in new places
Recently I visited some old friends who had just moved nearly three hours away. I felt so blessed to be able to see them in their new lives. They had made a radical change in every way. They left careers, and moved to a new part of the state to a very different way of life. I'd known these people for more than 20 years, before they were married to each other, before they had their son. We laughed both about old memories and the new ones they were making in their fresh lives. When we left them, I thought about how their life changes had made such an impression on me. It was valuable to me to watch people I knew so well make a major transition in their lives.
Make the effort: not much is required
In the last year I've made a point of reconnecting with people I've lost touch with: the person who gave me my first professional job, an old roommate, a good friend from high school who last I'd heard was living out of the country, people from college. I've found eerily that once I had the intention of reaching out, several long-lost people called me or emailed me out of the blue; people I hadn't even been thinking about but was thrilled to hear from. We're all just one Google click away now.
Pick up the phone. Send an email. Do a web search for that person you've been thinking about.
Even if you will not spend time with people, just the act of finding out how someone is doing, what they've been doing, is special. It's as though a missing puzzle piece in you has been found and carefully placed back.
With our busy lives it's easy to fall out of touch with friends. People move, they change jobs, and we enter different phases of our lives. Yet our personal relationships are what brings joy and fulfillment to us. Make time for your friends. Your old ones and new ones.
Our friends and family share our experiences with us, and we build memories with them. They know us in different parts of our lives, know our pain, know who we are beyond what our passing acquaintances ever will. I still know people I went to kindergarten with, even though I live 3,000 miles away from where I grew up. Your oldest friends are the most precious. They know the core of you. They know who you were before you learned to be an adult and put on the various masks we wear. And they reflect back to you the changes you undergo in your life.
Old friends in new places
Recently I visited some old friends who had just moved nearly three hours away. I felt so blessed to be able to see them in their new lives. They had made a radical change in every way. They left careers, and moved to a new part of the state to a very different way of life. I'd known these people for more than 20 years, before they were married to each other, before they had their son. We laughed both about old memories and the new ones they were making in their fresh lives. When we left them, I thought about how their life changes had made such an impression on me. It was valuable to me to watch people I knew so well make a major transition in their lives.
Make the effort: not much is required
In the last year I've made a point of reconnecting with people I've lost touch with: the person who gave me my first professional job, an old roommate, a good friend from high school who last I'd heard was living out of the country, people from college. I've found eerily that once I had the intention of reaching out, several long-lost people called me or emailed me out of the blue; people I hadn't even been thinking about but was thrilled to hear from. We're all just one Google click away now.
Pick up the phone. Send an email. Do a web search for that person you've been thinking about.
Even if you will not spend time with people, just the act of finding out how someone is doing, what they've been doing, is special. It's as though a missing puzzle piece in you has been found and carefully placed back.
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