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Sep. 8th, 2009 01:58 pmEvery now and again news of old friends creeps up on me. Today is one of these days. I can't talk about the friends specifically, because I know (or knew - I'm such a woeful letter writer these days - in my twenties I sent 20+ letters a week and now, just the occasional email) their private selves. I'm at the age when most of them have had at least twenty years of adulthood and the bunch I've heard news of today I knew back when we were just discovering what it meant to be grown up. It's interesting to see where we've all gone.
When I was a child, someone said that what our friends become over twenty years says a lot about who we are. I instantly decided that all my friends would have great careers and I would write their biographies. At eleven I was heavily into biographies and my ideal one was a particular volume about Marie Curie. Three of my friends were going to be Nobel Prize winners and five were going to win the Pulitzer. Science and literature: those were what mattered.
Quite a few of my friends from my twenties are changing the world. Seriously. Writing the breakthrough books or moving and shaking in the political world. Not the Australian political world, I hasten to add.
These are the friends I've grown most away from. I've become shy of them. L is no longer the friend who sat cross-legged on my floor and listened to a short story and told me, solemnly, that it was flawed precisely three-quarters of the way through. She's now doing awesome stuff in Swaziland. She visited me a few years ago and we really don't have so much in common anymore. We ought to: we share poltical beliefs and care about creating the same futures. I think she understands me better than I understand her. That's L, though. She's always been perceptive. If anyone can improve peoples' lives, it's her or another friend, V. Women at whose feet I could worship, if it weren't that I'd rather swap jokes and gossip and catch up.
The other friend who popped up today (on Facebook) is an even rarer kind of person. Someone who is deeply religious and has stuck to his ideals. Also stuck to his sense of humour.
And the third friend is someone who gave it all up because of her family. From them I want to hear stories of how cute the new baby is and whether the oldest is making friends at school yet.
Each of my friends past and present, is so very different, but not all are movers and shakers. I've lost contact with a seamstress friend and a florist friend and any number of schoolteaching friends through those letters I forget to write. I've lost touch with dentists and linguists and ecology experts.
I could focus on women like L and men like B and bignote myself "Hey, my friends become important." The truth is that many of them don't. It's easier to blog about things political and things literary than about dirty nappies and the frets with teenage children. It makes for better blogposts. I miss them all, though and regret the loss of the letterwriting habit.
So what do my friends have in common? What marks someone who is close to me or has been close to me? Because there's a pattern in it. Just not the one I expected when I was eleven.
They're all very highly individual.
Each and every one of my friends lives their lives vividly. None of them exist (half-alive) in the shadows of another. They know who they are and they care about the world around them. Sometimes this means high level politics and sometimes it leads to helping at the school canteen. Sometimes it means soccer mums or public servants and sometimes it means writers of high fantasy. Sometimes it leads to growing daffodils in an English country town and sometimes it leads to family history conferences in Arkansas and sometimes it leads to kicking up the sand on an Australian beach.
If I had been told this when I was a child, I hope that I would have had the sense to celebrate. Not one of my friends is boring. I'm rather lucky in this. They keep reminding me of the paths I meant to travel, but the truth is that I'm as highly individual as they are. Some of them have higher senses of duty than I do and some follow their inner dream and some just want to make much money and retire young, but all of them are impassioned about life.
The only thing I'm passionate today about is procrastinating. Time to do some work and stop thinking about people I miss.
When I was a child, someone said that what our friends become over twenty years says a lot about who we are. I instantly decided that all my friends would have great careers and I would write their biographies. At eleven I was heavily into biographies and my ideal one was a particular volume about Marie Curie. Three of my friends were going to be Nobel Prize winners and five were going to win the Pulitzer. Science and literature: those were what mattered.
Quite a few of my friends from my twenties are changing the world. Seriously. Writing the breakthrough books or moving and shaking in the political world. Not the Australian political world, I hasten to add.
These are the friends I've grown most away from. I've become shy of them. L is no longer the friend who sat cross-legged on my floor and listened to a short story and told me, solemnly, that it was flawed precisely three-quarters of the way through. She's now doing awesome stuff in Swaziland. She visited me a few years ago and we really don't have so much in common anymore. We ought to: we share poltical beliefs and care about creating the same futures. I think she understands me better than I understand her. That's L, though. She's always been perceptive. If anyone can improve peoples' lives, it's her or another friend, V. Women at whose feet I could worship, if it weren't that I'd rather swap jokes and gossip and catch up.
The other friend who popped up today (on Facebook) is an even rarer kind of person. Someone who is deeply religious and has stuck to his ideals. Also stuck to his sense of humour.
And the third friend is someone who gave it all up because of her family. From them I want to hear stories of how cute the new baby is and whether the oldest is making friends at school yet.
Each of my friends past and present, is so very different, but not all are movers and shakers. I've lost contact with a seamstress friend and a florist friend and any number of schoolteaching friends through those letters I forget to write. I've lost touch with dentists and linguists and ecology experts.
I could focus on women like L and men like B and bignote myself "Hey, my friends become important." The truth is that many of them don't. It's easier to blog about things political and things literary than about dirty nappies and the frets with teenage children. It makes for better blogposts. I miss them all, though and regret the loss of the letterwriting habit.
So what do my friends have in common? What marks someone who is close to me or has been close to me? Because there's a pattern in it. Just not the one I expected when I was eleven.
They're all very highly individual.
Each and every one of my friends lives their lives vividly. None of them exist (half-alive) in the shadows of another. They know who they are and they care about the world around them. Sometimes this means high level politics and sometimes it leads to helping at the school canteen. Sometimes it means soccer mums or public servants and sometimes it means writers of high fantasy. Sometimes it leads to growing daffodils in an English country town and sometimes it leads to family history conferences in Arkansas and sometimes it leads to kicking up the sand on an Australian beach.
If I had been told this when I was a child, I hope that I would have had the sense to celebrate. Not one of my friends is boring. I'm rather lucky in this. They keep reminding me of the paths I meant to travel, but the truth is that I'm as highly individual as they are. Some of them have higher senses of duty than I do and some follow their inner dream and some just want to make much money and retire young, but all of them are impassioned about life.
The only thing I'm passionate today about is procrastinating. Time to do some work and stop thinking about people I miss.