My first great love tracked me down on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. We hadn’t had any contact in more than two decades. The last time we were together, there were no cell phones or computers, Hip Hop was still called “rap,” and old man Bush was president.
My current freshman and sophomore students hadn’t been born yet.
She and I are pretty much the same age. But back then she was a sexy older woman. Three years is a lot when you’re nineteen. We broke up and got back together more than once. The last time I saw her, I was twenty-four years old.
We’d both since moved on with our lives of course. I got a Ph.D. in Nebraska and snagged a professorial gig in Baltimore after a quick pit stop in Arizona. She got a degree in social work and worked with homeless people in D.C. for a while. Afterwards she landed in San Diego and spent a decade in hospice work.
We caught up. It was nice. No tawdry affair, no complaints, no regrets. Just two people, who once loved each other dearly, remembering the happy and sad times they had together, and being grateful that each other is in a good place today.
Unsurprisingly, it brought to mind the old line by Alfred Tennyson, that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It holds true, I think; a timel
But more than that, all these years later it made me think about the way people grow. Neither of us is the same person we were twenty years ago, and that’s a good thing.
Because once you hit your mid-twenties, about the age when we’d last seen each other, personal growth only comes about if you put your mind to it. Some time about then, the automatic pilot mechanism on your maturation engine finally peters off for good. The thing turns into a bicycle, and you gotta pump those pedals to make it happen.
One pedal is courage, the other is honesty. You need the honesty to see yourself for whom you really are, and the courage to admit there are things about that person in the mirror you’re not happy with. Start pedaling and you’ll move forward. You’ll grow in positive ways.
But if you don’t pedal, if you become content to just coast down hill, then really you’re not doing anything more than spinning your wheels.
Sadly, some folks stop pedaling. They don’t become much more mature, happier, or self-aware than they were in their mid-20s.
I guess if you live long enough, it gets lonely because all your friends are dead. But well before that, a different kind of loneliness haunts you as some friends remain behind; beloved fellow travelers on life’s journ
ey who’ve since stopped bothering to discover much more about the world or themselves.
My first great love and I, we grew a lot during the two decades since we’d last spoken. And that’s why our reconnection was so sweet. We aren’t the same people we were twenty years ago. But we remember who we were then, how we got to be who are now, and the roles we once played in helping each other get here.
To love is to lose. But you can always love again.
A version of this article originally appeared in 20 Something Magazine.