I like catching up with old friends. I’m not terribly good at keeping in touch with friends; most of the times, I simply don’t feel the desire to talk to most people. Then there are moments when it suddenly hits me that I haven’t talked to so and so for a very long time. It’s always good when I do start a conversation with these friends and realize halfway through that even though much has changed, we still have the same chemistry as before. It reminds me that no matter how much we change, deep inside, we remain more or less the same people that we’ve always been. Of course, if you allow too much time to lapse without any form of contact, the gap might be too large to bridge. No one should expect anyone to still care about someone that they have no spoken to in a year or longer, but it’s always a pleasant surprise when they do and you pick up exactly where you left off (sorta).

That’s one thing about having been in a lot of places. I have all these different groups of friends, people I met at different times and places of my life. Friends from childhood, from China, from colorado, from Atlanta, from Solon, from Duke, from beijing, from Greece, from oxford, and now from London. Unfortunately I haven’t been able very good with keeping in contact with half of the friends I’ve made, either due to laziness or mere carelessness. But I don’t want that to be the case anymore. It’s not easy to make friends, and even if it is (which has surprisingly been the case for me in london), I still believe friendships are precious and should never be taken lightly or for granted. I’m someone who could never live alone, and I derive such a significant amount of happiness and meaning in life from my relationships with people. 

Hmm…i have no idea how I ended up talking about friends…. What I wanted to do was merely remarking on looking through pictures from the past two years and reminiscing. I like to look back on my life and pick out the brighter moments and savour the happy memories. There’s something very alluring to nostalgia, it’s almost like reliving the past, but in a very selective and indulgent way. The painful segments are no longer painful enough to make you cry, but the happy ones can still make you smile. Ultimately, it makes me much more optimistic about the future. Or maybe I’m just in an optimistc mood.