On the Pleasures of Chance Encounters with Long-lost Friends

March 10, 2010

Adam

Fleeting thoughts on randomly bumping into those people, who were once so important in our lives.

Reflections

Fleeting, chance encounters with old friends evoke a unique and underrated pleasure, especially when we bump into old friends that we may have fallen out of contact with a long time ago.

The accidental nature of such meetings - whether they be on the tube, in the street or between the aisle of a supermarket – remove any of the pressures that may develop in the build-up to planned reunions. Such pressures often hinder these sought-after rendezvous. Pre-occupations with unhelpful ruminations can lead to the experience not quite living up to expectation.

One may worry about what they should say, doubt about how they might come across, and obsess about what their friend might think of this future version of themself compared to the historical one. These fixations continue into the planned reunion and render us nervous, maybe even incapacitating us; resulting in a somewhat stilted exchange. Maybe, this incapacitation melts after a few minutes in each other’s company – but this is not always guaranteed.

Chance meetings on the other hand remove the incubation time needed for these concerns to gain momentum. After one has accidently run into an old face, there is only time for the neurons in our brain to leap to attention and search for a name. And while rummaging around the crammed attic space just below the summit of our bodies for this vital information, sorting through a mess of ancient personal recollections that we have refused to throw away, the neurons unintentionally discover some cherished memory from your joint days of the past.

If the previous connection between the two old friends was extraordinarily strong, then any initial awkwardness seamlessly falls away. Its remarkable the speed at which recalling flashes of a joyous life shared together can transform slightly familiar strangers into intimately recognizable friends.

Amounting to some unseen force or phenomenon, this flickering resurge of flourishing friendship uncovers something buried by the soils of time. That chance meeting unearths a treasure from a distant golden age, and it excavates that human connection as though it were some precious artefact from a by-gone era, forgotten deep in the ground for so long. But now it has been recovered and brought to the forefront of one’s mind.

Amid that dizzying and euphoric chance rediscovery of each other, numbers are exchanged and promises of meeting again are made in good faith.

“We cannot leave it another X years”, we tell each other through grateful, beaming grins. With our spirits now elated by this more than welcome ghost from a previous epoch in our lives, we say our goodbyes and waltz away.

Following our brief sojourn into the past, we take a step back into the present, and tumble uncertainly into the future. Our chance meeting and our vows to revive the once unshakable friendship between us are quickly reburied under a layer of impending duties and worries that encircle our heads like vultures around a festering carrion.

Nonetheless, these chance encounters with old friends, no matter how fleeting, can elicit a unique and underrated pleasure as they remind us of our past achievements in human connection.