I like to remember the past, but I do not wish to live there anymore. Or do I?

It is reunion time. My fraternity, high school and university and even my dormitory where I lived for one semester are having a reunion. My dormitory still has an annual  news letter 50 years after I lived there and 40 years after it was replaced by a parking lot. My dorm room had the proverbial paper thin walls and was inhabited by freshman who were on the road to "one and done." Some never attended class. My friend John Lastelic and I vacated in the nick of time and joined a fraternity, which, to close the loop, is having a reunion in Lawrence this year. Some prospective attendees have already placed their hotel and football ticket orders. They are excited. I am ambivalent. 

What would I talk about? Who really wishes to relive those years of beer drinking, carousing and fraternity athletic competition? All of which seemed so indisputably important at the time, but seem so equally unimportant now. Oh sure, I still remember the great athletic contests and other competitive events. They just do not seem important any more and I now question there genuine importance at the time. So who wants to talk about them? Not me.

And then there is the usual pile of small talk. How are you? How are your kids? And then there is the symbolic "lift your glasses high" to the memories of those friends that have already passed. Is it just me or is it depressing?

I prefer to talk about the great things still to do. The great projects of the  future. The virgin horizon still looks better to me than the ground previously cultivated. The photo on the left is me a long time ago in Hawaii. On second thought, the past was pretty good too.