We stood in the parking lot for quite some time, catching up on what was going on and what we had each missed out on. We discovered that for the last several months ... even years, we lived within four blocks or so of each other. Our community is not a large community, certainly not a Dallas or a New York, but we had been able for some time now to live this close to each other and not know it. I was totally amazed. I gave her my contact information and we parted, truly hoping that we will reach out and do something together, reconnecting to a childhood relationship that we had lost for years.
After we parted, I thought more about the situation and the experience. The experience was wonderful, but the situation was nearly more than I could wrap my head around. For the last couple of years, my cousin and I had lived within moments of each other. How many times had we both been grocery shopping, maybe only an aisle apart, or possibly even passing in the same aisle but too lost in our own thoughts to recognize who was around us. Did we use the same dry cleaner? Did we both go to El Mariachi to eat, possibly on the same evening? This was slightly overwhelming, but not yet mind blowing. Then I thought about people we pass within feet of every day. Are they someone we knew from an earlier time in our lives, but don't recognize?In my adult working life, we have moved several times. I think the count now stands at six times. In each of those moves, we were introduced to different people we came to know as acquaintances. These are the folks that you wave at or talk to at church or at Target when you are shopping. They are the people who bring life and interest to what could be very disheartening; moving from one city to another to do a job. I have always been lucky as typically this is something that Sara does much better than I. Then the time comes to move on, and there are a bunch of people you leave behind and really think about only occasionally, maybe at Christmas when you send out cards. But maybe, just maybe, some of them move too, and you end up close to each other again. If you knew this, you might share time and activities with them again.
On top of this, there is the group of people you spent the first part of your life with, in pre-school, elementary, middle and high school; as well as all of the activities that you took part of in those days. And college, or trade school, or the military. All of these folks you have known that were part of your circle and then moved on to other circles. Wow. Now it becomes mind-blowing. At any given moment, people from our past are more than likely nearby, in another aisle of the same store, eating at the same restaurant, using the same dry cleaner and we don't realize who they are.
In the middle of all of this introspection, someone mentioned to me that this is why Facebook is so powerful and pervasive in my age group. It is a way for all of us to find each other again. All you need is a name and a little bit of information and you can often either find the person you are looking for, or get connected to someone who knows that person. This is the connection we are looking for. The next challenge is to find ways to reconnect with them and stay connected. This has been difficult for me. I seem to ebb and flow around this, doing really well for a while, then going the other way and once again, losing people.
I believe in the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” - that we are all interconnected by less than six introductions from everyone in the world. I need to keep refreshing those connections so I don’t discover that I have been missing them at the grocery store. It continues to astound me what hard work being an adult is. I really hope that I get it all figured out soon.
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