If it's dead, bury it

I have a theory.

I strongly believe that, where your friendships are concerned, you stay the mental age you were when you met them throughout your relationship with them.

This isn't something to cause concern, and in most cases it causes delight (nothing is finer than seeing two octogenarians half cut and dancing like teenagers, let me assure you). What makes it awkward when you go on to form new relationships outside the one that you share with your friend. This can mean that, unless your friendship has a good foundation, it will crack under the pressure of the 'other you' and be destroyed.

As we get older, we change dramatically. Yes, I know - no shit Sherlock.

Had you told me 5 years ago that I would allow my child to eat Milky Bars (firstly, made by evil demons Nestle, secondly, not organic, thirdly, it's chocolate, surely MY child will dine on the finest banana chips?), I would have laughed heartily in your direction, whilst making a small hand gesture near my head with my index finger.

Having said that, had you told me 7 years ago I would have a child and actually be quite enthralled with it, I undoubtedly would have evacuated my bowels at the hilarity of the idea.

Make it 20 years ago that you were to advise me that I wouldn't be socking it to The Man, I would be working for The Man, a similar reaction would have been provoked.

Had you told me, 17 years ago, that most of the people I was friends with then would have left my life and I would be re-visiting that whole aspect, I certainly would not have entertained such information. They are my friends, and naturally I will always be friends with them. Well - not so much as it happens.

Things happen, events occur, and the friendships whilst not disintegrating require more work, more attention. Other things in life take precedent and the friendships lay fallow.

Here's the crux - with some people, you can slip instantaneously into that friendship again. It is not that it is lost, merely that it has been suspended or put on hold for a time, whether that be a week, a month, or a decade or so.

With others, you struggle to see the connection you could possibly have ever had with them. It seems incongruous that you could possibly have been so much as an associate of theirs, let alone that they were someone you shared hopes and dreams with.

It's always good to examine the past - we can choose to learn from the mistakes we have made. Or we can choose not to learn. It is up to us to decide how we use our experiences.

Sometimes, discovering old friends, and new ways to have a friendship with them, is marvellous.

I appear to be one of the few of those I lost touch with along the way that has children, and fairly obviously this has made an enormous difference to the person that I was as a teenager, or even in my mid twenties.

Some of the re-discovered friends have adapted to this version of me gloriously, and it is testament to the sort of friend they were to begin with.

Whereas with others...

There is an expression my Uncle once used to describe his religious views. He was an atheist, and it was simply this; "if it's dead, bury it."

The past is an important tool. It is just best, for your mental health, not to live in it amongst the idea of who people were or are, but rather in the reality of what or who they are today.