Nostalgia for the people we've been
Yesterday, two of our dearest friends from Shanghai got married in Portland. And absent the unexpectedly early birth of our second, we were looking forward to sharing in their special day.
But life had different plans in store, so here I sit watching over a sleeping baby and reminiscing about our time in Shanghai. Somewhat serendipitously, I also came across the following photo on FB. And I was struck by how perfectly it’s captured the feeling J and I have had every time we’ve embarked on the next phase of our lives (which, in the past 10 years, has been fairly often).
The first part of the sentiment I’ve always felt most immediately — the friends and people that made the place. Whether in Toronto, Cincinnati, Boston or Shanghai, these people often made us reconsider our next move, if for nothing else but the chance to continue to have them in our lives on a regular basis.
But it’s the second, more nuanced point that it turns out is the more deeply and subtly painful. Because you rarely bid farewell to that person you’ve become in that place, so excited you are to follow the next adventure. It isn’t until weeks or months later that you realize how much you’re missing being the person you were in that last chapter.
And for me, because each of the places we’ve been have been so very different from each other, I realize I became pretty different people in each. The carefree college grad in Toronto, the newly minted expat manager in Cinci finding her way in a new country, the eager and starstruck grad student in Boston, the newlywed balancing consulting and newly married life in Boston, the cosmopolitan marketing exec in Shanghai, the new mother and entrepreneur in Seattle….
Each so very different from the last, but so wonderfully packed with experiences and memories in their own right. Whole microcosms of lives lived in the space of months and short years.
As I think about our friends getting married and missing the event, part of me is suitably sad that we won’t see them for a while, as their lives have now taken them to Europe. But it dawned on me that a big part of me was looking forward to being that person I was in Shanghai, if only for a weekend. That surrounded by the people, I could be transported to the place.
Of course it doesn’t work that way. But as we grow older and take on new roles — wife, mother, manager, it is nice to reminisce and look back on the past chapters and who we were in each of them. What did we like and dislike about those selves?
And perhaps by recognizing we can relive them in the present, if only for a moment.