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This is a pretty short-sighted way to look at the world.
There's something to be said about those shared experiences that form the basis of friendships, both in the present and in the future.
I have a very good friend with whom I went to high school. Funny thing is, we weren't friends in high school. Ran in completely different circles as a matter of fact. We probably wouldn't have liked each other back then. But we met up again twenty years later in different circumstances and found we had a lot to talk about.
And that's the thing. A lot of you want to complain about not having friends or having difficulty making friends. But, in truth, the real problem here is that you aren't really open to the possibilities of making friends. People often choose their friends from a narrow slice of humanity, namely the people who talk and think the way they do. Yet it's kind of an impoverished way to go through life. Instead, one should choose friends based on their character and generosity of spirit in the present day, not what they were like in their teens.
I mean, from my high school, there is the cheerleader who became a fierce advocate for the homeless. There's the former classic jock who found his passion in life and became a professor of poetry. Conversely, there's the soulful girl in high school who wound up serving time because she embezzled from her clients in her commercial real estate firm. Or Mr. Popular who wound up peaking in high school and doing nothing much beyond that. He's the guy you see at all the reunions at the bar, boring everyone with his exploits from when he was sixteen.
In other words, if you're in your thirties and you encounter someone from your high school, don't shut them out just because of who they were twenty years ago. You know, when they weren't fully-formed adults. Were you a fully-formed adult when you were seventeen or eighteen? Of course not. So why would you look on others that way?
There is a lot of wisdom and reward in being open to the world. And there's none in harboring petty resentments from decades ago.
While you make great points and it is indeed interesting when teenagers become quite different (and for the better as adults), a lot of people do not wish to reconnect to people from the past for more reasons than just "I hated high school."
The awkward/immature/arrogant/annoying/etc. teenagers of the past who become the "fully-formed adults" you mention - whatever they end up as, they eventually figure themselves out, learn what they like and hate, and generally, "fully-formed adults" realize as they get older that the value of time is such that one becomes extremely selective with one's use of time for social purposes. Add to that the fact that many of not most of us settle down as adults in areas not very near where we were children or adolescents, and that there's no way to predict how nearby we will be living and working to the "fully-formed adult" versions of the people of the past.
Granted, there are always happy stories like the ones you mentioned. But in addition to the myriad factors that may lead a person not to even consider people of the past as friends of the present, there is the factor of pragmatism. Why bother looking for people one hasn't seen in 10, 15, or 20 years (and who weren't close then) for friendship now if/when one has other avenues which are less difficult towards the formation of friendships?
I tried the whole purposeful reconnection when I returned to my hometown and after 1.5-2 years realized it wasn't worth it. I like being detached and out of the know. The idyllic memories I was trying to recreate with folks from way back then would never happen again. I had to learn that those great memories are just that and reconnecting with those people all these years later didn't automatically create magic (like I thought it would) and I'm glad I went through this b/c it was driving me being away from home and wanting so badly to reconnect. That part of my life was simply a season and I won't visit it again and I'm okay with that. The present and the future are so much better.
What you wrote is true and sad, but it is also a fact of life that I believe some people have a hard time accepting and that's why they push to reconnect.
I can think of a number of scenarios including not adolescents from high school who are now adults but rather people I met when they and I were already adults. People have come and gone (and so have I) and "reunions" would be extremely difficult. I've seen people do "reunions" (not the high school sort but rather the adults-who-haven't-hung-out-in-a-while thing). Sometimes it works, but only for so long.
One of the most sobering and painful lessons about "growing up" is that (this is my assessment alone of course) is that the overwhelming majority of friendships one experiences is strictly seasonal. This is why high school friendships (and college ones too) seem so unbreakable when we're going through them. There is so much that everyone has in common: hormones, adolescence, first crush, proms, pep rallies, getting into college, etc etc etc. But when 5, 10, 15, 20 years later have come and gone, what "unites" us to others? If we no longer go through the same experiences, what is there to talk about? And add to this the demands of life (work, grad school, parenthood, marriage), and it is only when 2 or more people share a truly very profound bond and all parties are consistently intentional that people from the past remain as people of the present.
Some do. Depends on who asks for reconnection. I'm in contact with one person from school, another good one dead, third one offline. Ignored about 20 friend requests from former classmates because they were boring back then. Not going to entertain them now.
I don't connect with my ROTC college friends for a number of reasons. FIRST OF ALL, a lot of them are still playing TAMU Corps of Cadets and I left that behind over 30 years ago......not that I ever played it much, anyhow. Secondly, my views of the world have changed vastly from the gung ho environment of such an impressing military environment. Third, of course, I am now a quite active belly dancer; it was tough enough doing ballet and aerobics back then in that environment. Given how much of the world sees belly dancing as exotic or even stripping, going back for reunions is quite impossible.
But mostly, it is because a lot of them are still playing Corps.
Well, I tried reconnecting with someone recently, only to regret it. I thought the person had changed for the better but I was wrong. Now I understand why I didn't keep the connection in the first place.
^^This!
I have 2 friends from middle school I've always kept up with. None from elementary, hs, or college. Two friends from grad school. I just say I'm selective with who I'm friends with.
A few years back I got an email from a college acquaintance looking to move to my city seeking housing advice. I helped her with areas to look into and also helped her get a job at my company. Fast forward 3 years later, she met a guy OLD who had just been engaged to someone else in December, she got engaged to him in February, they eloped by August, and she said I wasn't happy for her when I was voiced my concern at how quickly they were moving. Drama! This is why we were never friends in college. LOL
I'll go a little against the grain here- haven't read the whole thread.
HS was not my finest 4 years. Life got much better after that. I attended a church-based school, we had to wear ugly uniforms, and the boys were on one side of the building and the girls on the other for the first 3 years, sharing only the cafeteria. (They changed my senior year, mostly to save money.) I wasn't flirtatious, I'd discovered feminist literature, and wasn't into their brand of religion.
Before our 35th anniversary someone started a FB page. I got comfortable enough with the group on there that I attended the reunion and had a great time- it was like meeting a group of new friends with whom I strangely had a lot in common. Have been back several times since (KC to Ohio so it's a bit of a trip).
I was surprised at the number of people I knew were local who didn't show up at reunions. My guess is that they're not that comfortable with where they are in life. I did disconnect from two HS classmates on FB. They're on opposite ends of the political spectrum and I agree with both of them on some things. What they had in common was an inability to respectfully consider other points of view.
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