We are all the same

26 years ago, I was sitting at a friend’s house with a ‘new’ boyfriend, watching the bears win the Superbowl. I was new to the crowd, sitting back, observing the company I was in. Little did I know then, that 26 years later I would be sitting at that same friend’s house at another Bears party realizing that I’ve had the same circles of friends for over 25 years. That’s a long time. Not everyone gets the good fortune to stay in contact with friends from that far back, let alone see them often. I use circles in the plural form, because everyone has many levels of friends. The ones you see all the time, the ones you see a few times a year at parties, ones you see less than that, and then there are the siblings and family members of those friends. Circles within circles. As I was sitting around watching everyone and seeing how our kids have all grown, I realized we’ve all changed too. Over the years, every one of us has changed and the tables have all shifted.
There are always dynamics at play within circles of friends. The hot guy, the perky cheerleaders, the picture perfect pretty girls, the entrepreneurial guy with a load of cash that always had a lot of nice things and girls all over, the bad boys getting in fights all the time, the hard drinkers, the cocky dude, the couple that went out and got their first apartment before anyone else who had been together forever and seemed inseparable. All of these characters in this play called life.
A quarter century later I’m sitting around the table thinking about everything that has gone on with everyone in the room. We’ve all had life happen. The hot guys are graying with bags under their eyes, bigger foreheads, bigger bellies, the size zero picture perfect girls are a little wider than they used to be, as happens with having kids, some of those forever relationships are now less than happy existences and some have turned to bitter divorces, some keep on ticking, most of us are living within our means, some successfully, some not so much, the dangerous guys have settled down, quit drinking, became family men, the cocky dude might still be so, but we all know he’s had his turn. All of those people who seemed ‘untouchable’ are, for the most part, on the same level now. We’re all the same. Life has mellowed us all. Some of us appear to have aged better than others, but that’s only because some wear it on their faces, and some keep it under wraps in their hearts, but we’ve all changed. Life happens to us all. A little pearl of wisdom learned through living a few more decades that can be shared with generations, those people who you might feel are better than or more popular than you, they’re not. Time will take them down the same path that we all travel, and it will change them. For the most part, we are all the same.