It is often hard to understand our past. We often have a rosy picture of a time in our past that is, quite frankly, not true. Generally speaking though, this does not pose a problem. Once in a while it does.
It did for me recently. I had a friend on Facebook that was a friend from High School. As I graduated high school over fifty years ago, it is easy to say I have known him for over 55 years. While not a close friend, I was close enough that I even went to his wedding. But, as is often the case, we lost contact not that long after high school and have only became friends on Facebook in recent years.
I knew he had become a minister and it did not take too long to discover that he was an ultra-conservative minister. It also did not take too long for me to comment on his more outrageous postings. It did not take too long before he disappeared from my Facebook.
A couple of years after that, I was at my 50th high school reunion and I mention to his wife that he had unfriended me. She vehemently said that he never, never did that. Ironically, a week or so later his postings reappeared on my Facebook pages.
It did not take but a few months before my sarcastic potshots rankled him enough so that he exploded and cut loose on me and unfriended me (see I am a Hater for further details). Needless to say it bothered me, both then and now.
But it did get me to thinking. And what I realized was that the person that ranted at me may have had little in common to the person that I knew 50+ years ago, We like to think we have not changed all that much but we have. We all like to think for the better, but maybe not. Nonetheless, we have changed. And to think that we have much in common with those people now is just being hopeful. (BTW: come to think of it, his getting religious was a hopeful turnaround back then if truth be told – don’t you know).
