The Joy of Reconnecting

(CBA London trip participants, 48 years later)

By my count, I have had fifteen permanent residences since leaving for college at eighteen years old. That's an average of just over three years in each place. Along the way, thousands of people have drifted into, and out of, my life. For a long time, I assumed those chapters had simply ended.

I recently wrote the novel The Meaning of Joy, inspired in part by a high school trip to London that I took with classmates in 1978. Like so many seasons of life, high school eventually became a memory as careers, families, and new adventures took us in different directions.

I knew that one of my classmates who had inspired a character in the novel had become a cardiologist in New Jersey. I hadn’t seen him since our ten year reunion in 1989. On a whim, I mailed a copy of the book to his office. I had no idea whether it would ever reach him, much less whether he would read it.

A few weeks later, I received a wonderful note. Not only had he read the book, but he told me that members of our graduating class had been gathering every summer for the past decade at a bar along the Jersey Shore, not far from where we had grown up. He asked if I'd join them.

I did.

Out of a graduating class of about 180 boys from our Catholic high school, thirty or forty showed up. Some faces I recognized immediately. Others took a moment. After forty-seven years, all of us looked older, but within minutes the years seemed to disappear. The names came slowly. The laughter came immediately.

What made the afternoon especially meaningful was that two classmates who had inspired characters in The Meaning of Joy were there, along with one of the Christian Brothers who had been both our teacher and a chaperone on that unforgettable London trip. We spent time recalling stories that had become scenes in the novel, filling in forgotten details, and laughing about memories that somehow still belonged to all of us.

As I flew home, I realized the reunion had given me something I hadn't expected.

We often think we create ourselves through our own decisions, ambitions, and experiences. But the truth is that we are also shaped by people who may only be part of our lives for a season.

Those classmates, those teachers, and that remarkable trip to London helped form the values I carried into adulthood. I hadn't fully appreciated how much of who I am today was influenced by people I hadn't seen in decades. Reconnecting with them didn't simply bring back memories; it helped me better understand myself.

Perhaps that's why reconnecting feels so meaningful as we grow older. We think we're revisiting old friends, when in reality we're rediscovering earlier versions of ourselves. The people who once walked beside us, even briefly, continue to live quietly within us, shaping our character long after our paths have diverged.

That, I've come to realize, is the joy of reconnecting.

Continue the Journey

Author's note: If this reflection resonated with you, you'll find many of these same themes—friendship, memory, gratitude, and the people who quietly shape our lives—in my novel, The Meaning of Joy. I'd love to hear what this reflection brought to mind for you. Contact me here.