The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same…

Those who know me know that my favorite book is Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist:  the story of a boy who goes in search of his destiny — his “personal legend”.  After several years, many mishaps, many lessons learned, his journey leads him back to where he started. 

I’ve recently become a Facebook junkie.  I set up an account about a year and a half ago, but really didn’t do anything with it.  Most of the people from whom I received friend requests were acquaintances from high school, and, honestly, I wondered why, since I really didn’t know many of them that well back then.  Eventually, though, I started exploring the site, searching out people about whom I had fond memories as well as people I interact with daily in my present life.  My friends list grew (and continues to) and now includes my own children, some of their friends, a few of my students, several colleagues, former colleagues, and many people from the various stages of my youth — college, high school, (including my high school band director) and even elementary school.  I haven’t spoken to many of these people in over twenty years. I admit that, while they are on my “friends” list, I don’t know if some of these people ever were my friends, or even if they were, if they still would be.  I don’t know what to say to them to break the ice, and I assume they feel the same about me.

However, I have re-developed relationships with a few people from my distant past through the nifty IM feature on Facebook, and I am surprised at how much I still like the people that I liked as a child/adolescent.  Susie and I (who were inseparable in elementary school, but haven’t talked since maybe 1984) chatted about our children and our romantic interests as though we still lived across the street from each other and spent every weekend night together.  Bruce and I caught up briefly on what has happened to each of us over the past 20-something years, then talked about things that were important to us now.  Amy, a high school friend and my roommate during my sophomore year in college, dared me to analyze her, though I haven’t seen her since 1987, and she said I hit the nail on the head.  Bart can still make me giggle with his snide sense of humor, even if he’s not putting Mr. Smith in a vacuum chamber. Tom still makes me smile with his eclectic and eccentric musical choices. It’s somehow comforting to know that the people who meant so much to me in my youth have grown up to be people that I’d still like to be friends with.  We have so much more than our past experiences in common.

I don’t want to suggest that these people have not changed since the 1980s — far from it– but who they are at their core has remained surprisingly constant over the years.  Apparently so have I.  No one so much as raises an eyebrow when they learn that I became a teacher, or that I’ve raised two highly gifted kids.  They tell me that I was always smart and nurturing, as though they expected this of me.

It was a conversation I had with a friend from my last year in college that struck me the most ferociously, though.  We lost touch after college, but met  again for an afternon  in 1993 in Texas, then lost track again until just over a year ago.  Now we talk or text almost daily.  One night when I was feeling really low, he called and told me that of his friends from that time period, I was the one he never worried about making something of myself.  He described me as strong, independent, intelligent, and sensible when I was 21.  He knew that I would fall down occasionally, but that I would always get back up. I didn’t see myself that way at all back then, and have spent all of my adult life trying to become that.  It was quite a revelation to me.  I wondered if, had I known then that I already was what I wanted to become, I would have taken a different path in my life, perhaps one not so difficult.  Would I have chosen different men to date/marry?  Would I have avoided the heartbeaks and disappointments I suffered?  Would I have done it all differently?

Of course not, I now realize, because the journey that I took in order to find that truth — that I always was who I wanted to become — was the journey I needed to take.  While the treasure that Coelho’s shepherd, Santiago, dreamt of was actually right under his head, it was his destiny to work in the tea shop, cross the desert, meet Fatima, become advisor to the chief of the oasis, become the wind, and get his ass kicked by robbers in the shadows of the pyramids.  He wouldn’t have found his treasure if he hadn’t taken that journey.

I’ve taken my own journey, and continue to, but  I know now that the treasure I seek very well may be right where I began.