A friend has gotten engaged and I am truly happy for her and her new fiance. She’s a great girl and he seems like a really cool guy. As the wedding invitations taper off after the boom of last year (or was it the year before last), I am reminded every time somebody takes the plunge that I, too, took the plunge, and have been swimming for the last almost three years.
I can’t believe I’ve been married that long, even though it really isn’t very long as far as happily ever after goes. People still ask me how’s married life because in most of the circles I traverse, I’m a minority. Married life is great, thank you for asking, I’ve finally succeeded in teaching Y to actually glance in my direction when I start one of my rambles. I reckon it’ll be another ten years’ worth of work before he learns to make suitably responsive noises.
No, seriously, married life has been/is great. And I thank God almost every day that I got lucky. But that’s not what I really wanted to blog about. A bunch of us went out last night – friends from my university days, either my age or give or take one to two years either way. And it struck me that right up to the day we graduated uni, we were pretty much on par in terms of where we were in life. We all went through school, we became friends, we hung out, we shared meals, we earned our degrees, we knew the same people, we were even fairly similar in terms of background…
Then we graduated, and everything changed in a flash. We got jobs in different industries, we saw each other once in a while, I got married, others were dating then they got married, others broke up, others remained single, some of us climbed the corporate ladder, I still wear slippers to work when I feel like it, others travelled the world, I wished I did, and really, we were not ‘on par’ in any sense of the word anymore. Each of us were on dramatically different journeys that we had forged for ourselves, sort of yelling across the grass to our friends on their respective paths every time the jungle cleared enough that we could see each other. And it had all happened so quickly.
It’s no groundbreaking revelation, I know, but I guess it never hits me hard until I actually come face to face with these friends. And I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say, except maybe I had a good time. It’s always nice to catch up and see how we’re all so different now, that even though life has thrown us for so many different things, whenever we get together again, it reminds me of when we were back at uni.
