Just had dinner with some old friends, where by “old” I mean “my age, and I knew them in high school.” Happily married. House. Two year old kid. Able to cook a mean paella, plus they popped a nice Pinot Grigio out of the wine fridge (wine fridge!) to share with the guest. You know, grown-ups … like me. I rolled up in my fancy rental car, paid for by my rock-star job … which sends me around the world and back again on the company dime.
Sitting around the table after the kid was in bed, we talked about $6000 ambulance rides in the pediatric ambulance. Their daughter has a seizure disorder. Apparently it “usually” goes away by age 6. Four years can seem like a long time when you’re waiting to hear the thrashing from the bedroom. I shared stories from my mom’s funeral. We talked about friends with drug problems, friends getting divorced, friends lost to the mists of time … but also friends with children, friends with success and happiness, friends whose lives are looking up.
They shared a saying: “If everyone lined their troubles up along the wall, you’d be in a pretty big hurry to grab your own troubles back.”
We agreed that, looking at things in perspective … even with grief and hardship on the table … what comes through is the good fortune. The incredible luck to be able to talk about these things over a nice bottle of wine … to not have to hesitate even for a moment to say “yes” to that ambulance ride, that intubation, or whatever. The freedom to reflect at all should leave us all stunned and grateful.
We talked about the changes in friendship – how you can rarely tell, at the time, who your friends are. It’s only as the years pass the true friends are revealed, and the passing buddies and chum(s) fade away. We talked about old-people parties … nobody plays “I never” or “truth or dare” anymore. Everybody already *has*, and talking about it just upsets the stability of things. Instead we talk about our mortgages or how he previous owner of our house wasn’t worth a damn with the repairs he tried to make. Just recently, we’ve begun to talk about management and the stresses thereof.
With the really close friends we talk about insurance and salaries, about death and seizures.
Young people think that idealism dies when you hit 30 … and sometimes it does. Not always, however … and idealism tempered by reality is a pretty remarkable thing.
I begin to believe that we, you and I, might really be able to do some good in the world … if only we would step forward and simply do it.