Recently a friend posted old pictures on Facebook. Nothing extraordinary about that. People always like to relive the past when the present starts to become mundane. A bunch of teenagers sitting around in their school uniform, seemingly with endless time on their hands and the spark of mischief in their eyes. Each picture was an encapsulation of incessant activity. Youth is energy personified. We looked almost bored with our vitality and apathetic to the blessing that is life.
Ever since I have laid eyes on those harmless posts there is a lump in my throat. Where has time gone? Yes, some of those uniformed friends would shake their heads right about now and remember me as the overly emotional one. But I cannot shake off the feeling that we should have done better. I do not mean in the future, in the now but we should have realized how very precious those seconds were, slipping through our careless fingers and we should have done better.
So many lost moments, where one could have told each other one more anecdote, another deep thought, if we had any back then, shared another heart ache, decided to walk away, decided to stay. As I gaze into the past I long for some to come back while I wish not to be reminded of others.
Those were precious days for me more so because I got to go home to my mother. She would wrangle with me to change out of my uniform so it could be washed. Every morsel I put in my mouth gave her strength as she sat watching me ungratefully guzzling the meal she had slaved over the entire morning while I 'hung out' with my mates.
One of those mates was taken away quite suddenly. He is in those pictures and I can clearly recall sitting in the school bus outside the closed gates of the building as we were told that there would be no studies as someone had been killed. I remember the moment of silence the following day. The feeling of disbelief yet the youthful hopefulness of the future. None of us were truly moved that day for not one of us truly knew the significance of death. The finality of it had not touched our souls. We were 'deathless' as the young generally is.
The many heart aches come rolling back and the regrets over relationships that, had one known better, would not have given a second thought to. What a waste of such precious gifts, tears, to be shed for someone who really matters. We all look so blase to each other when in fact there was such a keen awareness of people around us that we could put a cheetah to shame. Every sip from the coke bag, every twirl of the hair, each bungling step we took was for the attention of another. Such a waste of energy.
The pictures reveal the universality of youth, we could be just about anyone from any continent, any where in the world. Yet we took ourselves so seriously that we were unique in our own eyes and that separated us from all. How naive of us. How naive we were to think that we could sit on that stoop all our lives sipping carbonated drinks soaking up the sun. How insanely oblivious that we believed all that we heard and saw was the truth. How absurdly ignorant that we thought friends would stay friends. Straining to keep those close to us that did not deserve it while not turning a hair for those that would stand by us through thick and thin. Spending all our time with the wrong ones, leaving the ones that matter alone.
Perhaps my forty year old hormones have received a jolt having glimpsed what I was and realizing what I could have been but that lump in my throat is evidence that time passes by with such frivolous cruelty that you are left wanting in its wake. To be able to come home to mum, to call that friend who has been waiting for so long, to not call the one who couldn't care less, to spare the heart of the timid and the sensitive, to lash out in favour of the weak, to choose between company with wisdom and to throw caution to the wind when standing up for the truth. The smile on my lips, as I look at the pictures, is not for how similar I look to my past self, that is not true, we have all changed, for the mischief has been replaced with cynicism in all our eyes, it is for I know how foolish we all were,
