John - you've captured the essence of my own feelings with this: "The realization of how much of our lives has unfolded since high school left me with a great deal of gratitude for the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances. But I’ll also admit another feeling: a sense of regret and a bit of sadness that I hadn’t kept up with most of these people and who they had become—nor them with me." I have such deep gratitude for being shaped, challenged, and influenced at such a critical period of life by such amazing humans. I'm motivated in an entirely new way to explore and nurture these connections. What was once 'old' has become new again. Loved seeing you, my friend. And, I'm very much looking forward to the conversations to come.
As one who has left behind that benchmark of 4,000 weeks quite a while ago (!!), now in my 60th college reunion year (!!), I can only breathe a grateful Amen! to what you've written, John. The Burkeman quote is a good secular paraphrase, of course, of James 4:13-15. "Come now, you who say 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'--yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'" Taking that to heart does have the potential to put many parts of one's life--in particular our relationships with people and community--into meaningful perspective.
John - you've captured the essence of my own feelings with this: "The realization of how much of our lives has unfolded since high school left me with a great deal of gratitude for the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances. But I’ll also admit another feeling: a sense of regret and a bit of sadness that I hadn’t kept up with most of these people and who they had become—nor them with me." I have such deep gratitude for being shaped, challenged, and influenced at such a critical period of life by such amazing humans. I'm motivated in an entirely new way to explore and nurture these connections. What was once 'old' has become new again. Loved seeing you, my friend. And, I'm very much looking forward to the conversations to come.
As one who has left behind that benchmark of 4,000 weeks quite a while ago (!!), now in my 60th college reunion year (!!), I can only breathe a grateful Amen! to what you've written, John. The Burkeman quote is a good secular paraphrase, of course, of James 4:13-15. "Come now, you who say 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'--yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'" Taking that to heart does have the potential to put many parts of one's life--in particular our relationships with people and community--into meaningful perspective.