Friends of the Past

There can be a great deal of merit in looking up old work colleagues and friends on the Internet. It is an odd feeling when you do find a long lost friend. These are people you spent hours of every day with, in some cases more time was spent with them than with members of your own family. For me, I know this to be true. It is sometimes a very bitter-sweet thing finding someone you used to know. Someone you shared special moments with, someone you laughed with and someone you lunched with daily. It is also a blow to find that the person you once knew is no longer that person, changed beyond recognition. The people you knew who were anti-social, insular and quiet now have a wife and family. Those who were very technical and potential leaders of industry are now driving, designing gardens or coastguards. It's a strange feeling... Sometimes I wonder if I am best left with my memories, some strong and others vague. But memories nevertheless and precious recordings of those special times. I am also left with a quandary as to whether or not to contact a long lost friend. Having spent hours searching for someone and to finally track them down, is inevitable to try to contact them? Why haven't they contacted me? Perhaps they are best left alone. After all, if they wanted to find me, they could and quite easily. There are of course those who simply cannot be found. I begin to think of the worst or to imagine them living some foreign life in a far away country, miles from their past and their beginnings.
Some I find have done very well for themselves, MD's of their own companies or doing what they've always done for more money. The company MD's have grand labels, glitzy websites and an impressive portfolio. But strip away the surface and beneath you'll find them slaving away in sheds or tapping away on a laptop at the dining room table. For some it's just a facade.
But for most, the grand titles they once held, the executive toys, the power-lunches and play of authority, have all gone to be replaced with sedentary, mundane humdrum lives and jobs with no status or influence. These are less eager to make themselves available online. They hide their Facebook profiles and don't bother joining Linked-In. But like me, they'll cling to their memories of the past. Of better times when they really did count, when work was fun and our colleagues were our best friends...