Pilgrimage

Earlier this week I thought about rounding up my closest secondary school friends for a... well I thought about what I should call it... a pilgrimage. I say round them up, but there is really only two of them. It wouldn't be a novel idea by any measure whether in real life or in the movies. Not quite sure why this idea has only occurred to me now. 

There were four of us from the same class and we ended up on the school waterpolo team. Countless hours spent in the pool and we travelled together for many out of state competitions. In our last year we came up first place in the interstate school competition. Those years were awesome. We each went on our separate ways after secondary school and eventually settled in different countries. And then our lives as friends seem to have just fast forwarded - you could probably condense all the touch points in the last 20 odd years into a couple of months. 

One passed away about ten years back. A rebel living on as a legend. The rest of us living out our forty-something lives without too many surprises I think. We each have 3 kids - pooled together there are 4 boys and 4 girls, ranging from a 17 year old to a newborn. We meet each other one on one maybe once a year. These tend to be quick updates from where we last left off - what are the kids up to, how is work, any new hobbies. The last time all three of us met up was probably about 4 years back at a wedding. This just screams for a pilgrimage doesn't it? I don't want to meet them next at someone's funeral.  

Sure sign of being a forty-something? Maybe it is about wanting to be a kid again? Or a way to travel to places our families just wouldn't think of going? Maybe for me it is about starting another ritual just like how I have embarked on blogging. Maybe it is all these things put together. Maybe long time friends remind you that some things haven't changed all these years; that you have survived being yourself. Maybe they reveal to you what the raw elements that make you who you are so that you can figure out the next step forward.

Time to make some calls.