Lunch with a High School Friend
Posted by Stuart at 02:18 PM on April 28, 2006I graduated from high school almost two decades ago. And, as with many people Im sure, I've changed quite a bit between my late teens to mid-thirties. Since I left my parent's home for the last time when I was 18, my life has had several main chapters: college, graduate school, working life, losing everything in the last half of 2001 and rebuilding a completely new life in the new millennium.
I bring all of this up because I am feeling a big pensive about the past two decades, simply because I just had lunch with my friend Betsy, who I haven't seen since 1988. As we shared our "powerpoint bullet points" of the last 20 years, we realized that our story arcs have been quite similar: college ending with master's degrees, riding the dot com wave, losing it all at the end of 2001, and rebuilding a new life that has some remnants of our pasts, but in other ways forays in completely new directions.
Two main themes came from our discussion over omelets and bacon this morning: angst in the past and plans for the future. In these themes, however, we were very different. Betsy claimed that she lived an angst-free past and meticulously plans her future. I on the other hand, seemed to have a relatively angst-full educational experience and have a distinct inability to make a definitive 5- 10- or 20-year plan for my life.
So, enough navel gazing for now. All I know is that my time in Thailand has been mostly angst-free. And that is why I have never left. But what about my future? I still have no concrete plans, but I just have a vague goal of wanting to look back over my life at the end and see a pattern, a path. I want all the experiences I've had to lead to something, to mean something, to create something worthwhile.
What those somethings are remain to be seen...
