RENEWING THE OLD.

Mark Kolke’s “Daily Thought” stimulated this entry. He said, in effect; better to renew old friendships than trying to make so many new ones. I have cause for disagreement. While the idea sounds good i.e. re-affirming old and sometimes forgotten friendships, it can be, as I have found, almost completely unrewarding.

Why? Perhaps it is my “Looking Ahead” mentality which tells me that what lies ahead is richer than what has gone by. Not always of course, but in the sense that it is self-renewing – it is richer. I am perhaps contradicting my own forward-looking idea when I realize how in the past few years, I have wanted to rekindle old friendships, to renew my links with the past. Doesn’t work. Thomas Wolfe was right.

Most of the people I once knew have gone on with their lives in different directions than mine. I didn’t, by design, choose to make all my friends within my vocation, a trap that too many people fall into. You know what I mean. You go to a “lawyer” party and all the lawyers are standing around talking shop while their spouses discuss vacations and cleaning ladies. I know, I generalize. But for me, finding friends who share, not my occupation, profession or vocation, but share my ideas and aspirations about life and family and learning, and politics are my friends.

But that is another story. Unlike Mark, I enjoy meeting new people.(I'm not saying that he does not like meeting people.)I cultivate strangers. One old friend told me I “collect” friends. Perhaps I do. But in my eternal search for renewal and invigoration, I desire the company of interesting people. Often I am snubbed. They already have a circle of friends and seem to have no room for new ones.

But the greatest disappointments have been succumbing to nostalgia. Renewing a forgotten friendship is interesting but only for a while. How long can you reminisce about other old friends? About places and people you used to visit? You quickly discover that each of your lives have taken different paths and that aside from the past, you have nothing in common.

I remember an experience I had with “renewal.” In my struggling years as a young radio hopeful my wife and I made friends with people who were more or less in the same position as we were. One was with a man and his wife who lived next door. We became fast friends. My wife taught her how to play Mah Jong. He was a plain working stiff installing gas station pump islands. I was a young radio station manager. I think he made more money than I did. We moved away. Over the years I developed a career that led me to local prominence, and to a more elevated standard of living. I contacted him, or tried to. He said he was embarrassed. He was still plugging away while I had become “Larry Solway” and everyone knew who I was. It just wasn't a fit for him. He couldn’t keep up. He said thanks but no thanks.

In more recent years, realizing that time was passing more quickly every day; I had a few fits of nostalgia. “What ever happened to…” seemed to haunt me. I started making calls to old friends. In a couple of cases we did get together, but it was no longer a “fit.” One had become the CEO of a major company his father had founded. The other had developed a career in a family-related business. I remembered him best as a brash young announcer with a fair bit of talent for jazz piano. He no longer played. He had:”moved on.”

I’m sorry Mark. Trying to kick life back into long dead relationships is a mug’s game. You rarely win. I do have friends who have been friends for many years. We continue to be friends, but not by harping on old memories. The old friends I have, like me, have new things to do and new ideas to share.

Just one example about "new" friends: my wife and I have been home exchangers for several years. We do it, not because it saves money (which it does) but because we meet new people. We have made friends we would not have made had we stayed within our own restricted circle. And it is not just travel that does it. People who "broaden" their lives with travel simply "see" new things. I am not attracted to spending my time abroad talking to service people: hotel clerks, cab drivers, waiters, or fellow travellers - the people you meet on a paid vacation. You may see and learn some new things if you take a tour, but you will be, because that what tours do, cossetted from any real contact with the locals.

We now have people we can call friends in Paris: they are lending us their apartment for our trip. (They will come to Toronto at the same time.) I just emailed a couple in The Hague who have been kind and friendly to us on several occasions. I plan to visit a man in North Carolina who has become our friend through exchange, to let him know what we may visit him in September when an exchanger from Mexico is in our apartment. We have struck up what promises to be a rewarding friendship through dozens of emails we have already exchanged.(We'll be visiting him in January.)

Perhaps I shall get slapped around when I try to do the same thing in Paris. I’ll be writing about it, I’ll let you know what happens when I, a stranger initiate a conversation and hope for an even brief “friendship” is received by the Parisians I come in contact with. Will they want a “new” experience? Or will they, as someone who has lived in Paris told me, decline my simple overtures. We’ll see.