Aaah. Romy and Michelle.
(Courtesy of thundertix.com)
Not because I don't want to go, but work-related concerns and deadlines are keeping me from leaving to join in what I imagine to be a lot of fun - and surprises.
Who here will admit that after 20 years, some of your high school classmates stunned you with how they turned out? Thanks to social media, we now get a peek into how everyone else is doing, and I will be the first to say some people surprised me - in a very good way.
Classmates and batchmates who I had dismissed as "coasting along" back in high school are now doing more than just quite well, some are excelling in fields generally recognized to be difficult to make a mark in. On the flip side, some people who were always expected to just be successful in whatever they chose to do ended up looking like they "lost their way".
It underscores something I've had to learn over and over again, never underestimate people and their willingness to change their lives. And for those people I sometimes looked up to, some of them just may "disappoint" from previously held expectations and prove to you that, like everyone else, they can be mortal, prone to the dreaded word called failures.
Everyone will be a work-in-progress until our last breath.
Everyday is a chance to either say I'm better than this, I will make this day count, instead of counting the days and asking where the time went because nothing seems to be happening.
My hope for everyone in my batch is that, regardless of where we find ourselves 20 years after, we are a little wiser, bruised by life and how its' promise can sometimes be blunted by the harshness of reality, and have relaxed from our rigid misconceptions growing up that there is only one way of doing things, or that there is only a single road to success, however we all individually define it.
But most of all, I hope everyone has found some measure of happiness.
The Sandy Hook school massacre, the recent deaths from Pablo and countless other events this year alone underscores one fact: sometimes, the unexpectedness of life is characterized by brutality, cruelty and outright senselessness, it becomes imperative that we eke out a little corner, alone or with loved ones, to validate our being here, somehow alive, and manage to not give in to despair and destruction that seems to be never ending and all around us.
And we laugh. Laugh at ourselves, laugh at the silly mistakes - true, some of them weren't silly at all - and recognize that the only way we can give despair the finger is by enjoying the ride, staring it in its' face and saying, "no, you are not breaking me or my spirit down today."
We have lost some people - good, decent people - along the way. I don't mean metaphorically, but literally lost to us, unable to say "we made it to the 20th!". Let's remember them, and may this give us the realization that everyday is really a gift.
While we breathe, we can still do something with our lives. Let's make it count.
Aw, we had ours last year and it was great -- except for the fact that I was so overweight people thought I was pregnant waaaah hahahaha....
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