Meaningful Connections

I hated High School.  I've never been invited to a reunion, I am not even sure they have them, but regardless, even if I was, I would not go.  The same applies to most places I have been and left, through school, college, University, and various jobs I have had.  I like to leave a lot of things in life up to fate and for the most part I try not to ignore it.  If I meet someone by chance once, I will generally be pleasant and as sociable as I can be - usually not very, because of my social anxiety.  If I meet someone by chance more than once however, I tend to take a step back and think about it more.  I will usually try and engage more with that person because I take it as a sign that we were meant to meet.

On the flip side of this, if we knew each other for a while and we parted ways, if we haven't spoken or met again since, then there's very little chance I would actually seek you out.  The reason is the same as above, if I haven't spoken to you in years, there's probably a reason why.  This ignores a handful of people who I could not contact even if I wanted to as I have no means, although one could argue with the internet and Google by my side, if I really wanted to find them I probably could.

The idea of reunions always perplexed me.  I think it's rather archaic, and stems from a time where if you did part ways and lost touch with one another it was fully conceivable that you would never meet again and even if you tried you'd never be able to find each other.  A reunion in that respect most likely served a purpose in reconnecting people.  With Facebook and other social networks maintaining dominance, the amount of people who don't use them is relatively small.  Everyone you have ever met in the vast majority of cases will have a Facebook profile by now - unless like me they deleted it years ago out of protest and never looked back.

Most people in life that we will meet are people we meet through incidence and circumstance, there are very few we can truly say we met randomly.  We meet most people in situations we have been put in by others, or through shared experiences.  If you even set out to try and connect with random people who you have never spoken to before, and have absolutely no connection to at all, then you would likely be met with a lot of cynicism and scepticism.  The immediate assumption people would make is that you wanted something and for most people it won't take long before they outright ask what it is you want.

I take the view that if we have not spoken in years, there's no reason to change that fact until life puts us in a situation where we meet again and have a reason to actually engage with each other.  I know many people who make it an ambition to have a large circle of friends, and many more who put a prize on the longest friendship to the extent where they try to reconnect with people for the purpose of claiming they were friends for years.  I never saw the point in either of these.  My desire in life when it came to friendship and the connections I establish with other people was to make them deep and meaningful - this is one of the reasons I hate small talk and find it incredibly difficult, because I prefer to speak to people I actually care about or have shared interests with that we can discuss.  Say "Hi" to me and a conversation that ensues probably won't go very far.  Say "Hey, do you like xyz" and the conversation that would follow could last hours - and in more than a few cases it has.  So if you ever meet me or want to get to know me, then when you talk to me, actually talk to me about something.  Whatever it is you're interested in, start with that, as you probably won't know enough about me to find something I'm really interested in to ask about first - unless you've read quite a few posts on here.