A Coat of Many Colors

One of the few regrets in my life is my inability to stay in touch with people who crossed paths with me in former days and who have influenced my life. I have been told that if I would ‘get with it’ and use social media such as Facebook maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. I’m not convinced. The few times I’ve done this all I’ve seen are some shallow, inane comments made by or about people that do not inform me about who the person really is; in fact, usually a distortion is suggested. I really doubt that many people, who have any self-esteem at all, want others to judge them by what they often so thoughtlessly post.

I came across this verse once:
New friends I cherish
And treasure their worth.
But old friends to me
Are the salt of the earth.

Unfortunately, so unfortunately, people come and people go. They drift in and out of your life almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you open another book with another set of characters, then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past. But your old friends have a way of staying in your memory, frozen as they once were.

New acquaintances are more immediate, their issues more compelling, and the others start to slip away. You say it won’t happen, but it does. When you do make contact with a friend from the past you always see how they changed; and they see how we have changed. I’m sure we surprise each other. Your memory doesn’t quite jibe with the new reality. More often than not you end up more nostalgic than before. The Barbara Streisand song, “The Way We Were” (at least the title), captures this nostalgia for me.

Though our old acquaintances (and we) have changed, we can and should still appreciate the part they played in the development of who we are. John Ruskin said, “Every good life leaves behind the fiber of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.” The fabric of my life has in it the fibers of many weavers of whom I am grateful. Indeed, I am a coat of many colors.

Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: ‘you can’t go home again.’ If you do, you won’t find any of your old friends there, at least not as we remember them. Certainly, none of us is ‘the way we were. ’ Except for superficialitys I would say thank goodness.