kay apples.: Nostalgia.

I am feeling rather nostalgic on this grey Sunday. Maybe it's because I feel like time is picking up pace and I am keeping up with it, rather than it keeping up with me, or maybe it's because I have had the privilege of rekindling old friendships lately. Probably both.

I am a strong believer in "keeping in touch" with people who were once at all important to me- if they comply, of course. I don't understand how some people can just move along without looking back, leaving friends or even family members discarded by the wayside. I don't mean to say that these people don't care about their lost friends or family, but it seems they have decided they are just as well without them. I am not like that. My friends and family, old and new, are the very fibers of my self. Even people who I am no longer in contact with have had some effect on me, and I am not too prideful to admit that or acknowledge it. I appreciate people who have come, gone, and come back into my life. I have memories of hundreds of people- how can I ignore their existence?

One theory I have about this is that some people intentionally reinvent themselves as they grow, and perhaps these people feel they have surpassed the people who were a mere influence to a crude prototype of themselves. It becomes a hierarchical cycle for these people- to gain people who will boost their image, then to lose them when they reach their next stage of product development. I think it's sad.

In my opinion, the people who I have met and formed relationships with were all co-inventors of the person that I am today, and I appreciate all of their input. I don't think I am better than people who were a part of a more immature stage of my life, and I don't think that my model has surpassed theirs, per se. We grow and change at different rates, but we are all undergoing the same process in the same factory. We have free will to move into higher levels of development, but that doesn't mean that the nuts-and-bolts types who are happy as such aren't growing in other ways.

I am aware that this is probably the most abstract bit I have posted to date, but it was on my mind. Here are some old pictures to lighten the mood. :)