It’s not something that I ever spend time thinking about in the moment, but for sure it has become something that I now reflect upon with great relish: a nice perk about getting older is discovering that you have laid paths with others that, very likely, will someday intersect again.  

As humans, we find ourselves in all varieties of work and play. It’s like the classic bumper car ride at the Barnstable County Fair…or whatever fair you used to frequent. The ride starts and suddenly you’re behind the wheel of an erratic vehicle that you can kinda control, jostling around until you collide with other cars. You chuck into one, and then start spinning the steering wheel, hit the pedal, and are bound for a completely new direction (and collision). This continues in a kind of roulette fashion where you are just as likely to bounce into folks you’ve already encountered. I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but life in any work sector is very much like a round of more civilized bumper cars.

I think about the time I was stationed at this small Air Force command, and at one point another Navy officer checked aboard and we struck up a conversation. It didn’t take long to figure out that while we were strangers, we had positive commonality in knowing the same person who had meaning for the both of us. That job finished, and we both moved on—but in the years since, this officer has played in the same national hockey tournaments as my brother. I have offered my place for his family to stay, and this summer, I will go and see visit them. 

I find that especially in jobs like the military, the distance and low rate of communications is not a determining factor of friendship. We all know that our paths will criss cross again, and when it does come down to it, we always know that we can reach out whenever we need.

It’s not exactly something to be proud of, but I grew up with a New England mentality of standoffishness. For anyone without a pre-established connection to my personal network, I am not keen to immediately invest emotional energy into that person. To wit, someone on Twitter once posted the most apt interaction of this “cold” local mentality:

Sometimes, especially in the military, it can take me years to warm up to someone—more out of a sense of caution than anything else. And then the story goes that I wonder what took me so long to get to know that person. And it’s a conscious decision that I make. But I find that life is just like that; perhaps all of us are exactly the kind of people that we need to be for each other only at a certain point in time. We’re all built differently and we are all constantly evolving. 

If it shakes out that we find each other better at some future point in our timelines, we’ve already got that foundation of shared experience below us. And that commonality forms the basis for increased trust and appreciation. It probably also helps that we reach this point in our later years—after the lot of us have lived through a bunch of experiences, and thus know when it is time to push past the tall grass of niceties and get down to meaningful interaction with those experiences we value. 

And of course, maybe it’s not just the passage of time with respect to other people. Maybe it’s that I am learning to chill the fuck out a bit more, and have sloughed off some of that native weariness. I routinely have to remind myself that I too am still captaining my own beaten-up bumper car and I’m still a crappy driver. Further, I know that I am prone to distraction and this already doesn’t set me up for success in piloting my life in any definitive direction. And it is with these factors in mind that I feel such appreciation for coming back in touch with those who have been out on their own paths. 

I haven’t even hit fifty years old yet, but I am getting close. And with that in mind, I can already rattle off a list of folks with whom I have come back in contact with. Some reunions are products of tragic events, others are just by virtue of the job. Someone has a very specific question, and our network of friends have referred us to each other in order to provide an honest opinion. On the whole however, I’d like to think that life—if you let it—has a larger share of light-hearted recollections than it does the more challenging ones.  These are the moments that you should remember the most—and they are the ones that I look to more frequently as I grow older and look back on the twists and turns of living. 

I shouldn’t still be surprised when I fall back into touch with someone of value—but there’s a part of me that hopes I never lose this sense of wonder.  More than any financial accomplishment, military decoration or laudable life experience, the most important thing for me it’s the time that I get to spend with my people. Even if it is just fleeting. Even if it is just to catch up and get a quick read on things. These folks help to make me feel fulfilled—and untimely provide me with a sense of actually having contributed something meaningful through all the years and duty stations.