Married with children

Well, got back in touch with the girl from highschool, and in her e-mail she told me that she's been married for over two years now and has an 18-month old kid. While I have many friends from highschool who have had children, with her it's just very difficult to picture...afterall the last time I talked to her and saw her was over 10 years ago, just out of highschool. So the mental image of her is frozen at the age of 18. She might be coming through HK in January, but I always wonder if it's a good thing to see someone after so long, especially when you haven't seen them at all in between. Will it ruin the memory of that person who has always held a special place in your heart?

I finished reading Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" on the plane ride back from London. In the story two of the characters commit suicide, and the narrator mentioned how life goes on for the living, but the dead will always remain 17 and 20 (in the story). So as the living continue to age, how can the memory not start to blur? It's like going back to highschool now, you cannot deny the generation gap and the difference age and experience has made. Perhaps that's why some people decide to take their own lives, so they can be immortally remembered at that point in time.

Off on a tangent now...

But then again it would seem that we are really strangers to ourselves as well. I mean when I think of myself at 18, while obviously I still have a lot of the same nuances and personality traits that I had then, if I put the 18 me and the current me side by side, how different would they actually be? Quite different I would think. Since we have no choice but to be hurled forward in time, the 18 year old me will always be a great memory of what I once was, while I continue to move further away from that me.

You know, I'm not really a spatial thinker so I don't know why I'm thinking of this in these terms. But I guess the point is, I would definitely like to see her, as I in general will always embrace what is here now and what will come. Because no matter what happens, it's always my choice to keep those good memories of the past safe, even if time tends to color our view on memories...

Comments

[glutterbug]

Guess what you're exactly the same except you're a more mature you of that of 18. I keep ending up seeing friends i haven't for five, ten, 12, 15 years (good old growing up in HK and going to ESF, don't know where your friends all go!) and it struck me that they are all exactly the same.

Whether I get along with them has everything to do with if they have grown in a maturity level that I cam accept, or not. If their flaws that I disliked had grown or diminished, and whether in my late 20s I have the same kind of patience or if that thing still bothers me or not.

It's a strange one. I can see it so clearly as I sit and talk to them or hang out with them. the ones I can't stand remind me most of who they used to be, because in the last so many years, I had grown out of some of those young habits and thus now, i don't apreciate it in others. the ones I love but maybe don't always keep in touch are the people who have remained the same, and still has all the best of what they used to, but maybe don't have a lot in common anymore, and there are ones like having around, as they are my old friends.

And then of course there are the people who have grown at the same level as me, or expanded the same way, who I am so glad to see and we are close. Then sometimes I can see, some of them just don't really like me, or never really liked me.

But most of the time, it's always good to see old friends, even if it's for one lunch or something. I don't know... it's just good they are still here.

I get all nostalgic over all my old friends too. I totally remember that madonna song, "This used to be my playground, this used to be childhood dream, this used to be the place I went to."

yan