Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anais Nin

I spent the afternoon and evening with two old friends. Two friends who I know differently, separately but who have subsequently found each other. It was a special afternoon, I suppose party because it’s really the first time I’ve been out with friends for that long in over a month. It was also fun. Just sitting and chatting and walking up to the waterfalls and just sharing the moments, the laughter. I realised how much I’ve missed it.

These two friends are also particularly special. I first knew each of them a long time ago. Our paths have diverged significantly in the intervening years, occasionally crossing from time to time. I didn’t even really know them at the same time. So much has happened in between. In all our lives. In many ways these are people I shouldn’t really even know anymore. Yet we can sit and share moments and have real conversations, annihilating space and time.

That possibility of connecting in some way, despite the everyday differences, built on common history, was a gift today. I don’t think I expected it. I forget that common history can do that. Shared memories of people and moments and times make things easier. And there is something secure and comfortable about spending time with people who knew you before you were cynical and grown-up and jaded.

Friendships differ. There are some friends I see very seldom with whom I must become acquainted all over again every time I see them (although that is entirely worth it with some people). With others there is some desultory conversation continuing all the time – no matter how far apart or how different our lives, the common people and situations mean that we are somehow part of a shared conversation all the time, so meetings are simply picking up the thread and updating each other on the latest shared knowledge.

With old friends, or perhaps just with particular people there is a sense that all we have experienced in the intervening years, in the time since we last talked, is just another part of us; that somehow the selves we bring to the conversation, though richer and wiser and sometimes sadder and more cynical, are the same people as before. With those friends, there is no need to get reacquainted – to tell every little story and share each detail. It isn’t necessary.

Just a few days ago, a friend was talking about how she wished for all her friends the love of someone who can be completely supportive and who can make you a better person. I ask only friendship of people like that. I sometimes forget that I have it. Sometimes from those I don’t see for years at a time. Sometimes even from those I have almost forgotten are friends since the last time our paths have crossed.

It’s terribly easy to withdraw into yourself when you spend to much time alone. It was really good to reconnect and to be reminded of worlds within and between us that I’d almost, half forgotten.