Shared histories

Ever sat back and wondered what you were like 4-5 years ago? I thought about it today. Though you can easily tell yourself what are the things that have changed since then, you find it pretty hard to be able to have an overall picture about yourself. Or probably to think of what you were like to other people. The people who were around you and you met everyday. And you probably don’t meet them so often now. So, would they think that you are pretty much like what you were back then?

A lot of lifelong friendships are based on the past. On what happened in the past. On shared histories. What you went through together. The moments that you spent. The good times and the tough times. The shared hurts and the shared joys. And when separated by distance, we get involved into our own lives. We keep in touch with some more often, and others not. But every once in a while, you speak to someone that you have not spoken to for sometime, and then you think, “Exactly as it was all those years ago”. Because some things never change.

And though you feel that a lot of things have changed about you, and you have become a very different person that you used to be, you do those little things are essentially ‘you’. And you get to hear it from someone who has not seen you through your change and all that has happened to you. And you get the comment, “You are exactly the same as you used to be” or “Some things about you never change” and then it hits you. You think back and say – hey, so much has changed about me but this just stuck on. Odd.

And that is where old friends make their connections. In their pasts. In things that were there in their pasts and still exist somewhere now.

In shared histories that spill into their futures.