Relationships

This week, a good friend of mine, came back to Lubbock to a work related trip. I spent the better part of the day yesterday catching up with him.

I had forgotten how much we did while we were in grad school. We worked together briefly in the ATLC, we worked in the same lab in Computer Science, we were constantly at Crickets or Abuelo's, or Rosa's eating. I've been on plane trips with him and on car trips with him. 

All of that was ten years ago. He moved down to Abilene and then back to Houston. He got a job at NASA, where he has done very well for himself. He has a wife and a daughter now. 

While we both have had ten years to grow up and mature, in a lot of ways, our relationship is pretty similar to what it was years ago. While neither of us had a lot of responsibility or accountability to those things which come with maturity, I think we were both pretty grown up already. We were both in our late 20's and neither of us was very wild.

Since he moved out of town, we met once back in 2008 when I was at a conference in Houston, and, just like this week, we picked up where we left off.

This is the fourth time in recent history I had the opportunity to catch up with a friend after they have experienced some serious life experience. They were all different: a few hours during a day, over the phone, and an overnight stay. While, they different because they were with different people, they had a lot of similarities.

Sure, there was plenty of catching up. We've all had kids since the last time we talked. Between the four of us, we ended up with eight daughters and two sons. The youngest was 4 months, while the oldest is 14 years old. 

I don't know why, but it's amazing to me how my friends can have kids AND still be the people I knew them to be 20+ year ago. I was the last of all of them to have a kid. Maybe i'm just naive. I thought they would end up acting like the kinds of people who have kids. Maybe I just hung around the wrong kinds of people who had kids.

While their ability to still be themselves after the gauntlet of parenthood is interesting, but even more interesting is how catching up with each one was satisfying in different ways. I've known each of these guys between 15 and 25 years. However, I talk with different things with each one of them. Each one of them feeds some part of my soul. That era when I spent 10 years trying to become a good, professional programmer? Yep, Todd was there. In high school when I was trying to figure out who I was, Gerald became the first good friend I had who did things in a way I wanted to emulate.

Each of them mentor me in some way. Todd is incredibly meek, yet very determined to be excellent in his job. Hunter has it all figured out and is very self-assured. Gerald is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Cohen is Cohen, regardless of what situation he is in.

Then there is me. I'm interested in so many things and want to see it all. My lack of focus is problematic at times, but I have seen an interesting pattern. All of my friends don't fulfill the same need that I have deep inside of me, they all fulfill a specific need deep inside of me. Sure, they overlap, and sure, these friends can all get along together in the same room. However, most of them are fairly dissimilar in personality and interests. And of course, while they are dissimilar, they also have some similarities. Their manner and energy levels are similar to mine. We have similar interests.

These recents interactions have gotten me thinking about relationships. Yes, relationships are hard. However, without effort on each person's behalf, they are impossible.