I just got back from Day 1 of a college reunion. I'm feeling genuinely quite happy, with a happiness level that is quite high in a long time, so I thought I'd journal a bit here tonight.
It's not a college reunion for the entire university, but it's for a student organization I joined in college. The main thing is that everyone is super tight-knit with everyone else, and so instead of small talk it feels like just seeing your friends again, but like a bunch of them all at once. Which is a lot to take in because in post-grad when you reconnect with a few of these friends, it's only a little subset at a time, and that already feels joyful and intense.
I've also done a great job maintaining a lot of these connections--I just haven't realized it--and so having everyone in the same place was very much a reaping of what I've sowed in terms of keeping in touch with friends, texting them, meeting them in ad hoc settings, calling them, etc. That makes me very happy.
Not sure what else to say. I think the reunion is great because it's true that everyone has been feeling a little bit of nostalgia for LA; and also there is nostalgia for the fact that we all are a particular group of people with a strong set of shared values that are extremely hard to replicate or find in another context for some reason. It's really great to meet people who are 5+ years older than me, and they're making jokes with the same humor that I know and love, even though I've never met them, because we come from the same cultural background of our club.
Like, nobody's fake. Nobody's too nerdy but also nobody's too empty headed. Nobody's arrogant, that kind of thing. It's just us friends hanging out like normal. It's just that our tribe is absolutely massive.
We have two more days of hanging out, so it's definitely gives you enough time to talk to everyone without feeling needlessly pressured. That being said, tonight I had engaging, authentic, chill conversations nonstop from 5:30pm to 11pm. As an extrovert, that felt so damn good. Like I said, I don't even have to have smalltalk or do the "life catch up" because I really have put in the effort over the last few years to keep in touch with my friends even when they're not physically present. Or rather, because I've really rarely had them physically around, I've never taken them for granted.
We ate at Wurstkuche, and I thought it was hilarious that they had the space to accommodate us without us having to make a reservation. It's almost as if Wurstkuche is a dining hall. I guess the one is Arts District is more crowded, and that's what I was expecting and thought we wouldn't have room. I mean it was Saturday night after all.
It's really nice to reconvene with your old friend with whom you have so much shared context, but also shared values, who take certain things seriously but not all of life seriously, or as someone put it, making sure to take care of one's "peace" among it all. That's super vague in the context of a blog post, but I'm just going to keep it vague. And also to hang out with people who have tried covering the same philosophy or life perspectives that you have, and who have come to similar conclusions from it about what they want to take away from different input sources and how to harmonize it into a life well lived.
I'm very excited for the next 2 days. Goodnight!
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