I remember going back home for the summer after my first year of college. Of course, you and I were excited to catch up with everything we had been up to in the past year. But how could I possibly say everything I wanted? Sometimes it was so overwhelming that I couldn’t bring anything to my lips except for, “It was good!”
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How could I possibly show you all the fantastic friends I had made in college? How could I possibly show you all the acquaintances I made in college that I hoped would blossom into friendships? How could I possibly show you all the even smaller relationships that I had made in college? How could I possibly show you how one friend from college reminded me of one of our friends from high school? How could I possibly show you this new world that I had found myself in, and how could I bring you there to share this joy with me?
When you asked me what I had been up to, my mind drew a blank and there was a weird pause in our conversation that we had never had before. Did I want to tell you about that one time when… Nah, that was stupid. Or what about… Nah, it’s not really relevant anymore.
So I started with the easy things. I rattled off my class schedule and shared the eight courses I had taken over the past year. I told you I thought I was going to major in Economics at the beginning of the year but then I took the introductory course and I didn’t enjoy it, so now I was thinking of exploring International Studies. I rattled of my extra-curricular activities. I recounted as much as I could remember.
And you did the same.
At the end of it all, I knew what you had done in the past year but I had no idea how you were really doing. During the last month of school, all I could think about was seeing you and all our friends from high school that I had missed so much. But now that we were here, I couldn’t help but feel like everyone from high school was in a different place now, and I don’t mean just physically. I was scared that we would be stuck with a shared past and a divergent future.
And then you told a stupid joke.
Which reminded me of the stupid joke I wasn’t sure was worth mentioning earlier but now I would definitely mention.
It’s easy enough to talk about the big moments but it’s the little moments we share that send us reeling in fits of laughter. When we think there’s nothing more to talk about, we just need to remind ourselves that there’s always something happening. It’s just a matter of what we care to pay attention to, what we care to hold onto. We live life through our memories. Even what I did just one second ago is now just a memory. There are too many of these memories to catch and it’s so easy to let them fall through.
But we’ll catch them. After all, that’s why they call it “catching up,” isn’t it?