The major problem is, of course, that when pondering on this it becomes pretty clear that the most important word of the title is ‘Could’. It is almost impossible to say with certainty that ‘this is the last time’ and I guess we should be thankful about that.

The particular thing that got me to writing this post was the fact that sometimes you come across circumstances where a potential ‘last time’ is, for one reason or another, missed. Those who know a little about my recent past will recall that to celebrate a ‘big’ birthday in some meaningful (to me) way I embarked on my ’70-for-70′ project – reconnecting with people. Some I was still in frequent contact anyway but I wanted them to be part of the 70; some I had only infrequent communication with; and some were people I hadn’t connected with in years.

The last group were, of course, the most challenging to get in touch with. I generated a list of people that ‘should’ be in the 70 – which in itself was a pretty arbitrary number – and some detective work followed ! In some cases I failed to find a way to try and contact them. Two spring immediately to mind and are the primary catalysts for this post. One simply popped into a ‘contactable’ space after I had almost given up – and it was lovely to reconnect – the other, for a long time, remained ‘unfindable’ until I finally got a breakthrough and a possible way to make contact with them.

Thanks to a year filled with other things I didn’t immediately follow up on the connection – in this case I had not had any contact with him for almost 40 years – so I wanted to be able to properly converse when we did finally meet again. If there was one thing that I found during the ’70-for-70′ project it was that being ‘in contact’ with people is actually time consuming and deserving of full attention. So it wasn’t until now that I tried to follow through on the connection. Message sent. Then a search on the internet followed because I remembered that I had seen a relatively recent video of him.

It found the video – and an obituary – he had passed away on New Year’s day. This last contact with him had been missed. It would be easy to think ‘if only’ – I could have messaged him last year. However, the reality is that I didn’t so the memories were not brought to mind by a reconnection – but they have, to some extent, been brought to mind by missing the opportunity to reconnect. I won’t ever know whether I was part of his thoughts at any time in all the years – in many ways I would expect not, but I know that he certainly would not have forgotten who I was.

This is not the first ‘missed last time’ and probably will not be the last! With another friend who passed a few years ago I also had a last opportunity to connect with – although in this case we had been in touch not long beforehand – it was just a one last chance that I chose not to take – I didn’t know that I was missing a ‘last time’. The two friendships here illustrate how diverse links between people can be – in one case we have someone I spent a lot of time with many years ago and then almost completely severed the connection and in the other is someone I spent a lot of time with many years ago that I had continued to be in intermittent contact with ever since.

What this strengthens is the desire to avoid the missed last time situations and the need to take the opportunity to make things ‘just once more’ in case it does turn into the last time – the last opportunity to do something or to connect with someone. Actually – one more chance to generate memories – which in the end are what we have left.

One irony is that no matter how hard we try it is almost impossible to actually know when something actually is happening for the last time. It would be really annoying to treat everything “as if” it is the last time – I am sure that everyone would get pretty fed up with that – however what we should try to do (perhaps) is simply to avoid making a decision to NOT do something simply because it is inconvenient or awkward or whatever. Some of those things we would later look back on and think – “I wish I had …” and we would have missed making those memories.

In “the good old days” friendships were – whilst not necessarily straightforward, then at least manageable in as much as my friends were drawn from people that I spent a lot of time with. You may fall out with someone – but pretty soon the perceived slight is forgotten. Maintaining the relationship pretty much just consists of talking to them and playing with them.

Fast forward though life and, whilst the fundamental fact that your friends are drawn from the people with whom you spend time is still true, there is a much bigger population of such people and friendships are more ‘chosen’ than “fallen into”. There is also the ever increasing issue that people who were your friend spend less, or no, time with you any longer and slip out of your friendship zone. In order to “remain friends” some effort is required to keep in contact. Maintaining a friendship with someone you rarely or never see requires effort on the part of both people.

Technology over the last few decades has made this both more possible and more complicated – in many ways making the achievement of “staying in touch” easier whilst making the cumulative effort almost overwhelming.

I have no intention of making this post a description of all my friendships, but it is worth exploring some of the life situations that I have been in which impacted the way in which friendships developed. Note that I should caveat this all by saying that for much of this the detail would be different from one individual to another, so it is only the generalisations that are worth considering as transferrable between people. I myself am someone who (I think) is friendly to just about everyone I meet, but at the same time the number of people who actually get ‘close’ is very small. I should also say that, for the purposes of this post, I am consciously ignoring family as they are a quite specific group of “friends” who share huge parts of your life.

In my early years the people I was with came from two places – the Salvation Army at Govan and my primary school. The folks in the Army were an integral part of my life up until I moved south at the age of 23. The primary school link was broken much earlier when we moved from Govan to Penilee and I changed schools. Basically, at that age, I had no regrets about leaving behind my friends – but, on the other hand this gave me what was basically the first opportunity to make new friends as the “new boy” in the class.

When I moved from primary to Secondary school there was another “friendship rift” as I went to a different school to ALL of my primary friends – again without really maintaining the links. At Allan Glens there was a different dynamic as everyone was ‘new’ so there were no prior friendships – everyone had to work at linking up with some of their classmates.

The same thing happened when I left Secondary school and went to University – although because of the nature of uni life I didn’t really interact with anyone that frequently until the last year when there was only three of us doing the degree course. At the same time as this was happening my ‘community’ in the Army widened to include a lot of people from other Corps – not just across Glasgow but throughout Scotland – and beyond. I also found a new community within the Glasgow music scene thanks to my French Horn.

So – when I moved to Bournemouth there were an awful lot of people that I sort of left behind. Very few of whom remained in some sort of contact and some of that few slowly disappeared from my contacts. There was, of course, a sort of ready made community to join at Boscombe Salvation Army and I started also to grow a “professional” community through work and beyond.

Going to Vienna was another significant change – although I knew it was a temporary one and I was returning to Bournemouth quite frequently. Here I was in a new country where I knew no one and could barely speak the language. I discovered what it was like to be a “foreigner”.

That was very much a whistlestop tour to lay the groundwork. We now move on to the main part of this post which is with regard to technology.

The advent of personal computers, the www, mobile phones and more has changed things – basically people are, on the whole, more reachable. This is on the one hand a good thing, there are fewer reasons for “losing touch”, and on the other hand a complication, how do you find the time/effort to keep in touch with so many people. Looking back over the brief highlights of my life it is easy to see that there would be many people that I might have wanted to keep in touch with.

In a previous post I mentioned this in regard to my “70 for 70” exercise. I said there about how hard it would be to ‘properly’ keep in touch with any significant number of people.

These days you can go on Facebook (and I amusing that as an example I am well aware that there are other alternatives as well) and effectively keep ‘everyone’ up to date by broadcasting you daily life – and unfortunately some people do that – but that in itself doesn’t constitute keeping in touch. It may result in many “likes” but I would question what proportion of those are done with very little thought. Hitting the like button – or, for that matter any of the reactions, is in many respects too easy.

Having a large number of “friends” on FB is often seen as some sort of status symbol – for some people ‘collecting’ friends is almost an end in itself – whilst there are others who deliberately avoid being “friended” so that they can remain pretty much anonymous online.

When I left Glasgow for the deep south my options for “keeping in touch” were fairly limited. I could phone – but the reality was that I didn’t know many people’s number. I could write – I probably knew even fewer addresses. With most people it was simply a case that whenever I popped back ‘home’ I would get the chance to meet up at some event or other – not exactly maintaining proper contact.

All of these options also had the downside of limited “information exchange” – I wasn’t experiencing their life in the same way as when we were ‘together’ geographically and information could be obtained by other means. I guess that it could be summed up as “you didn’t know what you didn’t know” – which is never an ideal situation.

The technology now makes all of that easier – but crucially it is still very limited, primarily by what the individual chooses to share. (and what you actually receive if it is not directly addressed to you!) Without being careful it is easy to assume that you are more “in touch” than you actually are.

This leads on to a related – and oft overlooked – issue with these types of ‘connection’. They are rarely, if ever, at the same level of importance for both parties. It is almost inevitable that one person ‘needs’ the connection more than the other.

So – how do you “stay in touch”? How often do you need to communicate in order to maintain the friendship?

Of course, the answer to those has got to be “it depends”. I think that I need another caveat here – I think that, in general, if I consider “how often do I contact my friends” the answer is always going to be “not often enough”. However, in most cases I think that there is an acceptable frequency that has developed over time – different for each individual – which whilst still being not enough is at least a pace that can be maintained. For some people that might be once a year, for others every day or so. Depends on the circumstances.

The difficulty arises because there is no longer a habitual getting together – like every day at school, or every Sunday at the Army, or every day at work. With all those community ties being broken it relies on each party to keep things going. Something that I think we all are less than adequate at doing. There are always the day to day tasks which get in the way of putting aside time to ‘talk’ to someone in another town/country. Without the non-verbal cues there is also going to be a slight reluctance about overdoing it.

So – what is the right communication rate? I don’t think there is one. Even between people who communicate with each other frequently the precise rate will vary. For those who have a less frequent exchange the rate will, probably, vary even more. A further factor to be added to the equation is the individual’s expectation. Too frequent and they think “am I overdoing it?” and not frequent enough and they are forever apologising for not “talking”. A sort of no win situation if ever there was one.

Bringing it back to the personal I only rarely think “why have I not heard from them?” and that is usually because there is some other background knowledge that makes me think that a lack of communication is a bad sign. One friend goes quiet when there is too much going on their life. Another goes quiet when feeling down. Only in those type of situations do I perhaps feel inclined to “check up” on them. Otherwise I am happy to receive communication at whatever frequency it happens – in some cases it is a very short time, in others it can be over a year. (although I do usually wish those that I am sufficiently close to a Happy New Year – so that limits the ‘quiet’ time)

Interestingly (to me at least) in an age where we generally interact less with people it has become more important to understand the background stories. I would contend that nowadays most of our “friendships” are with people who are not interacting with us physically on a frequent basis – I mean those who have many hundreds of friends on FB cannot possible find time to actually hold a sensible conversation with them regularly. The result is, inevitably, that with few exceptions we know very little about our ‘friends’ – I touched a bit on this in a previous post.

This lack of depth of knowledge will in turn inevitably result in misunderstandings and an inability to really communicate in a meaningful way. Certainly from my own experience the vast majority of people that I am connected to online are in many ways strangers – I may know quite a bit about some aspects of their lives, but other aspects remain a complete mystery. In turn this means that the level of trust that you can have is limited and it becomes something that must be built over time. Again, the absence of non-verbal clues exacerbates this as when you are messaging someone there is no way to be sure how they receive that message.

Are they really pleased to hear from you? Did they only skim read what you sent because they were pressed for time? Was their reaction more of a “not another message”. You cannot know – unless the reaction is confirmed in some way in a response. If someone replies “I intended to message you earlier, but it slipped my mind” that could be taken in quite a few different ways.

With most of my online ‘chats’ I find that I am the one who initiates things – and yes, in some cases I think “why do I bother” – and this also gives rise to the thought “am I being a pest by messaging”. That said, I think that it is more common for me to not communicate enough than to do so too often.

This post was triggered by my thinking about how difficult it is to have “real” friendships in this current age. It is too easy to take people for granted – only talk to them when we want or need something and fail to properly connect with their thoughts and feelings – problems and achievements – all the things that you would be much more aware if you live your life physically alongside them rather than virtually separated.

Food for thought – I am sure there are people researching this sort of thing – but I am unaware of any guidance on how best to approach virtual friendships in a more productive and empathetic way. I am thinking this may be another subject I will return to.

The standard way of visualising this is that your passage through life beginning at birth is like a train journey with people getting on and off at stations along the way and ending when you yourself leave the train on your own death. Here is one version of the story :

This simplistic view works well to introduce the ideas and, for many people, it may be sufficient to clarify their own worldview.  However, everyone’s life journey is different and for some this may be just too simplistic.

Assuming that we stick with a single train journey representing our journey through life then there are a few additions that I would make to better fit with my own life journey.

The first is to make explicit the fact that the train has many carriages – each of which is representative of a ‘community’ that I belong in at some part of my life.  Unlike a real train, the configuration of these carriages is continually changing during the journey (actually this does work a lot more like this on the continent – travelling around Europe it is not uncommon to get groups of carriages that join and get separated) and some are easier to reach than others)

The metaphor is already being stretched because the question that immediately comes to mind is that I am on this train – other people are on their own trains – or are they – is there just one train shared by everyone – or does everyone have their own train superimposed on top of others? Lets assume for the moment that we are only interested in how our own train works!

Note – in a similar way the “Red Thread” falls down when you start to try to visualise ALL the red threads rather than just the one connecting you to another person.

In this post I am going to continue the thought experiment with a few examples of people who travel with us along the way.  These are all based on real friends (although in some cases I reserve the right to combine multiple people in order to make a more coherent story) and the way that we have interacted.

I guess we start off with the fact that when we ourselves get on to ‘our’ train for the journey we are actually joining an existing ‘community’ – our family.  Perhaps this is the only moment on the journey when there is a welcome party who are expecting our arrival – at least in the way that they have been anticipating it for quite a long time – without knowing precisely when it would happen.  This carriage of the train is the one where we will spend almost all of our early years.

Everyone who boards the train has a role to play – otherwise there would be no point in them getting on.  For some, indeed for most, that role may well be simply that of a spectator or observer.  For many the role will be undefined or unknown when they board and, indeed, a single fellow passenger may well perform multiple roles during the journey.  I would posit that only a relative few have a definite role to start with – clearly mother and father would qualify in that category and when each of your schoolteachers comes aboard it is with a specific purpose in mind.  That is not to say that these well defined roles cannot be added to – so a teacher can become a good friend (or enemy ).

Where the role is initially unknown it rather depends on your attitude to predetermination as to whether you think that the roles that they eventually play are somehow already known (at least to someone) or whether the choices made along the journey will shape the way in which roles are allocated.

Looking back, I cannot think of many people who have come into my life with their role already fully defined.  Schoolteachers are one exception and there are a few others, but for the most part people have assumed roles at some stage after they have been on the journey for a while.

Some arrive onboard with a fanfare – others almost sneak on without being noticed.  I can think of people who I have “known” for a while without particularly interacting with them who have – for one reason or another – become very important to me, assuming roles that are very central to my journey in some way or other.  I think, for instance, of someone who was among the “not really noticed” group for some years, joining me on many parts of my journey without playing a central part.  Then one day we ‘connected’ – pretty unexpectedly (certainly on my part) – and that particular red thread was pulled tight and strong for a while.

Another person who illustrates the multi-role nature of this came onboard quite obviously – we were both in the same musical group – and they were, to some extent someone who was learning from me in an informal way – we were friends and they developed some skills “under my wing” – so to speak.  Later, in a slightly weird twist of fate we became teacher and pupil in a formal way – but in the long term the roles were changed – they became the expert and someone that I could ‘admire’.

As I said above, when you board this particular train the destination is, inevitably, your final stop – when you leave the train on the occasion of your death.  (there is plenty of philosophical/theological discussion to be had about that statement, but I am not going there at the moment)  However, along the way you have some intermediate destinations which are defined by your goals/ambitions/desires etc..  This again leads to stretching the metaphor a bit as these intermediate stops will be reached by different – maybe conflicting – routes which often run in parallel.  We could follow a sort of quantum powered track where you are on multiple trains at once but I feel it is more understandable – if less accurate – to assume that your train is applying some complicated algorithm solving the Travelling Salesman Problem to determine what is the best route that satisfies all of the goals.

The goals themselves will be almost fractal in nature – each will have a set of sub-goals – and each them sub-sub-goals and so on ad infinitum.  One such path is learning with the goal of being “well-educated” (whatever that actually means); another is career progression with the goal of a “good job” (again whatever that means); immediately it is clear that whilst those are two separate goals they intertwine a lot; a further goal could be to create your own family – or if you like – to extend your existing one; there will almost certainly be some hobbies that you want to become proficient at.

That slight diversion took us away from the central ‘friends’ topic but it was necessary since the achievement of those intermediate destinations will (probably) be done with the help of others – and those others will, for the most part, be only necessary for that goal.  Very few will reach the elevated status that affords a front row seat to your life.

As I write bits of this – then have a break – and come back to it later – it is becoming clear to me that rather than “the finished product” this post is going to be a bit of a stepping off point – introducing some ways of thinking about the subject and outlining ideas about things that are important to think about as you delve deeper into the metaphor.

The next item on that list is considering how these other people come to travel on “your” train.  Clearly some are – if you like – inevitable fellow travellers – our parents, our siblings, other relatives. Some are at the complete other end of the spectrum and have joined the train almost by accident – these would include the large number of people who observe parts of your life without ever (seemingly) impacting it.  (I inserted seemingly, because even these people can have effects that they are not aware of).  Some people will be sort of invited onboard – I am thinking here of those that you actually want to become closer to – perhaps a romantic link, perhaps an interest in knowing more about their ideas, perhaps someone you know can advance you on the journey to one or more of your goals.  Of course, there will be those who come onboard for precisely the opposite – i.e. they believe that you can advance their journey towards a goal so they actively move to join your train.  All of this works in both directions.

In this category I would include what these days might be termed ‘virtual’ people – by that I mean people that you would like to have in your life, but who – for one reason or another – would never actually be there.  The author of a favourite book, the composer/performer of a favourite piece of music, even characters in a book.  It may seem strange to think of inviting Beethoven on to your train – but for some people his music is definitely part of the journey.  (unlike some, it is safe to assume that these people will not be reciprocating by inviting you onto their train although it is interesting to think about how the fans of a performer appear on the performer’s train – I guess as simply observers)

So, some of your fellow passengers are there by choice – either yours or theirs.  Choices also will determine how far they travel with you.  This is something that I have addressed in part before – the fact that every little decision we make can have significant downstream impacts – and that is not just for yourself, but also for all the fellow travelers.  It may not affect all of them equally and, yes, for some it will have such a small impact that it will go unnoticed.  In terms of your own train journey each decision will have no impact on the final destination – your final demise – however it clearly could change how long it takes to get there .

There are big decisions and small ones – in terms of how the passenger community is affected.  If you change your job, or move to a new area or similar this will certainly make a big difference to who you are travelling with – especially, of course, those who are on, so to speak, the fringes of your community.  There are other types of decision though which can have significant impacts on those who are much closer to you on the journey.

I think of someone who was a close friend, sharing many adventures together for a long time.  They met the love of their life and their connections changed drastically.  Exacerbated by a move away to a new area the links they had formed over many years became less strong.  I will say that the link with me remained – in some way – strong even though our travel on each other’s train became less frequent.  That was a decision/choice made by someone else that impacted my journey.

When I moved to work in Vienna it was a choice made by me that impacted others.  I gained a group of new fellow travellers whilst losing others – in some case temporarily, in others for the rest of the journey (at least so far).

In the “good old days” your fellow travellers would be there with you – physically – at least in most cases. Pen friends were, I guess, one of the exceptions to that – don’t suppose anyone uses that particular phrase much now. Things have – without doubt – changed and now I suspect that for most people the majority of their fellow travellers are virtual rather than physical – existing in the “metaverse” rather than in the “here and now”. This thought on its own opens up a number of interesting new rabbit holes to go down however, for now I will confine myself to considering the basic meaning of having such virtual travellers along for the ride.

The biggest difference is that it becomes much more difficult to determine who is “there” and who is “somewhere else”. Have they left the train or are they simply manifesting themselves in a different part of the train. Having lived through the change from the physical to the virtual in this regard there is a further question of determining how much some people existed “on the train” when there was no way for them to exist ‘virtually’. I think her of quite a few people who seemingly left my train for one reason or another and who – it seems – have since rejoined the train as I have connected with them again online.

I think of one example – someone who for a few years was a very good friend – then circumstances had us in different parts of the country and we lost touch – recently we have reconnected even though now we are in completely different ends of the earth. To what extent were they always “still on the train” and I just couldn’t discern their presence? That is also true of quite a few people who I made an effort to contact once social media came into our lives. To some extent they must have been somewhere “on the train” because I wanted to bring them back closer to me.

Was I on their train? I guess yes, again, although it may well be that the pulling closer again was one sided and it hadn’t occurred to them to do so. I have (I think) described elsewhere how most if not all connections are unequal – seemingly more important to one of the pair than to the other.

There is, I suspect, much more to come in this vein, however this single post has been hanging around a few days now and is a bit long – so I will publish it.

I will just finish with a little bit of an epilogue thought – perhaps foreshadowing some future thoughts…..

Given the fact that I am now in my seventies I am most certainly more aware that I am, so to speak, getting closer to the buffers – not in any morbid way, simply that increasingly I think “is this the last time that I will….” and that has to be a consideration. Yes, this could, potentially, be my last post! All of this is not because I am feeling like there is any imminent danger of me fulfilling any “last times” – just that it is part of my thinking in a way that it wasn’t not so long ago.

Hopefully I will be riding this train for a while yet – and who knows who I might meet along what is left of the journey.

It doesn’t take long thumbing through the entries here that are in the friends tag to discover that I view friendships as exceedingly important in our lives.  Perhaps it would be better to describe them as connections as this post is going to delve a bit into how people go in and out of the category of “my friends”.

First of all I do believe that just about everything we are in life is shaped by the people that we ‘contact’ – and I am using contact in a very broad sense here – for instance, reading the book “Sophie’s World” brings you into contact with Jostein Gaarder, the author ( I have chosen that example only because it was the first book I saw when I looked up from my keyboard – not because there is any particular significance in this story).  When you listen to the music from Swan Lake you come into contact with Tchaikovsky.  Those are equally part of our shaping as the schoolmates we come in contact with or the people in the running club.

One way or another these contacts – connections – are (or can be) influential in your life.  I think back here to those I was at school with, to those I played with in various musical ensembles, to the teachers and professors who taught me, to my family members and to many more categories of people that I have encountered through my life.

The vast majority of these are fleeting connections – for instance, of the fifty or so that I travelled with for 10 days around France in the Wessex Youth Orchestra only one remains in contact and even that is not a very regular contact.  I could state a whole host of similar examples.  Whether or not the contact remains does not, however, necessarily reflect the importance of the connection (those familiar with my blog will recognise a few echoes of the red thread coming through here).  My last teacher at primary school had a big effect on my life – but I hardly had any contact with him after those couple of years ended.

Others had just a small effect, but they have persisted much more – often because they belong to the same ‘community’ as me – so those in the Salvation Army Band, or the running club, or work colleagues.

Having said all that I will get to what I was thinking about to start this post.  There is a lot of opinion out there about the merits (or otherwise) of social media – is it a good thing or not – as the bard once said the answer here is likely to be “mibbees aye, mibbees naw” – and as is so often the case a good response might be “it depends”.  One area where it doesn’t reflect ‘real life’ too well is in the area of friends, or connections, or whatever they are called in your favourite social media.  Once ‘friended’ it is exceedingly unlikely that you will ever become ‘unfriended’ – happens sometimes, but in my experience not often.

Thus people have thousands of ‘friends’ – when the reality is that most of those – like my primary teacher – have really left the circle a long time ago.  I wonder if there could be something developed which allowed your friendship to in some way decay if it wasn’t properly attended to.  Now – its not for me to say what the right algorithm would for such a thing, but certainly it should be possible to achieve.

I think now of my “70 for 70” exercise last year.  Having just one conversation with those seventy extra people turned out to take more effort than I expected – now what about the others (approx 400-500 I guess) who are friends on Facebook or connected on LinkedIn or whatever.  The reality is that I am not sure I have the time to properly attend to those connections – yes I can “broadcast” something that they will all see and gain a little insight into my life – but is that necessary?

As with many of my posts – I am not here positing a solution.  Rather just putting some thoughts out there to see where they lead.

To answer the question in the title, I think that most friendships are ephemeral – or at least time limited.  So many times I hear “when I contacted my old friend it was like we had never been apart” – which is true, in some senses, but it doesn’t change the fact that the friendship had become – at best – dormant until it was stirred into action again – and – probably would once again fade soon after that renewed encounter.  That doesn’t diminish the power of these friendships, or the importance of them in our lives – it just changes the way we view them.  They come – they go – sometimes they come again.

Each time they are cherished, each time they add a little to our life experience – without them we would be pretty much worthless.

Although it is worthwhile going back to the previous post I will summarise it here so as to emphasise the different point of view taken.  Back then I was writing about the fact that we interact with people for all sorts of reasons during our life and each of those gets to “know us” to some degree.  However, when you begin to delve into it, that knowledge is pretty superficial – and is partial even for those who know us best.

So I got to thinking about just what this meant with regard to the folks that I was ‘re-connecting’ with – what I knew about them and what they knew about me.  In Living in Parallel Worlds I outlined a number of different worlds that I myself inhabit or inhabited in the past.  Those ideas sort of permeate the other posts on friendship that I have made and are particularly in focus here.  The reason for that is that in each of those worlds we meet people – often the overlap between the worlds is minimal – sometimes there are people who share a number of these worlds.

The people that I have been contacting come from many different worlds and even those who inhabit the same world may not know each other as they can be separated in other ways.  If I think of my work colleagues for instance there are people that I worked closely with at some point in my forty years who have no knowledge at all of others.  The main reason for that is, of course, temporal – those I worked with at the start of my career were different – in most cases – to those I worked with towards the end.  A very few spanned (almost) the whole period, but even those were not always in my current “circle” so to speak.

That means, of course, that each of these people will have had different experiences of working with me – but crucially, there is probably no one who is knowledgeable about my whole career.

The same sort of argument can be put forward in other spheres of our lives.  Very few, if any, of the people we have come into contact with over the years has knowledge of all the events of our lives – even during the period when we were “in contact”.

I remember some years ago doing a devotional thought at our band rehearsal where I talked about the fact that we didn’t really know what was going on in each other’s lives and therefore we could never be sure whether they were going through a bad patch or not.  Although we were all quite ‘close’ to each other we still depended on the other people telling us if something was bothering them or if something had really pleased them.  For some people that sort of sharing did not come easily.  So we all knew a part of what was going on in the other’s lives, but had no way of telling how much we did not know.

When I was contacting people I came to realise that I was, not entirely subconsciously, perpetuating the gaps.  If I contacted someone that I hadn’t spoken to for many years there is no way that I could recount everything that had happened in the meantime – so it was inevitable that they would receive some sort of synopsis.  What I realised was that part of the process that then happened was matching what I thought were their “interests” to what I told them about.

For instance, for those that I used to go running with I talked, primarily, about running type matters.  Yes there were other things mentioned, but the focus was on how things had affected my fitness generally and ability to go out running specifically.  For those that I used to make music with the way my music life had developed was a major topic.  For each person there was a highlights reel tailored to what I thought might interest them.

Did I choose the right things – I don’t know.  Were there things I didn’t tell them that would have sparked a new connection between us – quite possibly.  I guess I will never know.  Equally I might well have “turned them off” by talking about stuff they had no interest in.

There is no way that we can ever know everything about anyone else.  Nor would that lead to things being “better” on the whole.  What does stand out for me is that we must be better at recognising that we do not know everything about the people we are talking to.  In order to function we must make assumptions, but we must recognise whether the source of our knowledge is information that has come from the other person or something that we have made up to fill the gaps.

I don’t think that there is an easy answer to this – except the fact that we need to recognise it as an issue.  If we meet someone new we do, of course, initially have no knowledge about them at all – so there are a lot of assumptions to be made.  We naturally assign people to boxes – which is a dangerous thing to do because although first impressions are often not far from the mark they are also possibly very wrong.  This is particularly true when it comes to anything about which we ourselves harbour some sort of prejudice or bad opinion.  Popping someone in one of those boxes straight away is wrong – but I dare say we all do it from time to time.  Unfortunately for some people not only do they do this as a matter of course, there is then no way for unboxing to happen.

This is, perhaps, most likely to happen when we come into contact with someone only in a very brief way.  Perhaps this extends to “celebrities” where we all categorise them in whatever way without actually knowing them at all – since for most celebrities there needs to be some sort of act – a persona – that can be different from the real person.  We also categorise people according to who they mix with – guilty by association so to speak.

There is one other thing to be added here before I close off this post – people change.  I have got back in contact with people that I hadn’t talked to for many years.   My initial assumption seems to have always been that they are “the same person” as when I last knew them.  Whilst that might be substantially true, it is also the case that they will have had life experiences, education, disappointments, perhaps tragedies that will impact them and – yes – change them.

For all the reasons that I have given above they may not share any of these changes – they may allow you to think they are “the same person” – or, alternatively, if you are lucky they will indeed share some of the ‘substantial’ events that have reshaped them – and then you must be prepared to be surprised – even shocked – by what you learn and perhaps that new knowledge will change your perceptions of that person – NO – it will definitely change your perceptions – whether for the better or the worse depends.

I am fortunate to have many people that I can call friends – and I realise that there is not one of them that I “know” completely.  I think – I hope – that I am sufficiently aware of the limitations of my knowledge of each one.  Many of my work colleagues, for instance, I only know their professional persona – it is entirely possible that I would be surprised, shocked, even horrified if I knew about their more private lives.  (as an example of that I remember sitting behind someone at a conference and realising that he was composing porn stories on his laptop while listening to the lecture!)

This adds to my litany of posts on friendship – no doubt there will be more to come

It doesn’t surprise me that there were no posts to be had during our house search and house move – that took up a lot of time and internet searching.  There was no shortage of “thoughts” going on – but no real opportunity to sit down and form a reasonable post about it.  Looking back there are a couple of drafts that I started but never got to the end of.

The New Year gave me pause for thought – as always at this time of year (I suspect for most people) there are reflections on not just the past year – but on all the years that one has survived.  Reaching my 70th hogmanay is not an idea that really crossed my mind in the past – and certainly when I was younger there were no thoughts about how many hogmanays I might see.  One thing for sure – I won’t see another 70.

As the years have past the way in which the New Year has been welcomed has, of course, changed very much.  The idea of a first footer arriving with a lump of coal, some bread and a bottle is something that (not for all) fallen into just memory and not actual practice.  The idea of welcoming a stranger anyway would be seen as slightly peculiar – never mind the fact that the actuality was that often someone was sent outside just before the bells to be sure that the First Foot was “appropriate”.  (as for the First Foot claiming a kiss from every woman in the house – well that would be seen in a different light these days as well!)

Talk about twisting fate!

This year – as most recently – New Year was celebrated with just three of us.  No longer a “gang” of youngsters wandering around Glasgow looking for the next party.  I have celebrated with many people through the years.  That got me thinking about the way in which people come into and go out of our life journey.  Walking beside us (at least metaphorically) for a while before finding a slightly different path.  I have written quite a bit in these blogs about the different sorts of friendships that we develop over the years and the way in which we become linked to other people.

There is, of course, a school of thought that we are all connected and that the connections are simply tighter or looser with specific other people.  Some of the connections may not even be direct, but only through others – and we can choose whether to – so to speak – cut out the middle man and pull the connection tighter.

Over the years the strength of connection varies – getting looser through time until something binds them closer again.

There are people that I have spent the New Year with over past years that I now have no idea what they are doing or even where they are.  There are people who were – for a time – very important in my life – friends, work colleagues, members of musical groups – who now are “somewhere”.  Of course, I am now at an age where folks I knew long ago are simply no longer with us – and that also gives cause for reflection.  This year Terry was Promoted to Glory – there were a few years of my life when he was an ever present part.  There is at least one person who I have reconnected with in the last year that I hadn’t ‘spoken’ to for many years.

So the changes continue – people float in and out.

All of this has challenged me a little – and so I commence on 70 for 70.  Between my 70th Hogmanay and my 70th Birthday I intend to contact 70 selected people from my past that I haven’t communicated enough with in recent times.  In some cases I already have a way of contacting them – in others it will require some detective work.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

Take Over Bid, Jesus Folk and Spirit were all produced in Glasgow while I was there, but I did not take part in the cast of any of them. I did though have a starring (!?!) role in the Southern Division’s production of Glory that was performed at the Wembley Conference Centre as part of the Salvation Army’s 1978 International Congress.

This gave me the opportunity to discover that there are just as many ‘funny’ moments for the cast on stage as there are in the orchestra pit. There are certainly plenty of times when things don’t go quite right. The trick is to carry on as though it was meant to happen

Anyway – for today’s link I have chosen a song from Spirit – for me this was the musical with the best music.

Gowans & Larsson : Spirit – Love Cannot Fail

Comments :

George McConnell

…and just in case you doubt it – here I am in action at Wembley

Gordon Muir

and the goal posts were left intact

Terry Hudson

Hey, George, you do realise that I was the first person ever to sing that song, Kelvin Hall 1974. With John Matear as Ananias, John Gowans as Peter, and the other John on the piano – truly an all-star cast

George McConnell

I remember it well – and also a conversation with you beforehand about which note you were going to sing on the final “cannot” – the safe one or the risky one

Terry Hudson

George R McConnell I went ‘risky’. It almost worked!

George McConnell

Terry – yeah – I remember that as well

Terry Hudson

In my defence, it was 46 years ago, I was young and foolish, and singing live in front of thousands of people at the end of a two hour presentation was always going to be risky

George McConnell

I am sure that all but a very few of the thousands listening were so wowed by your overall performance that they didn’t even notice it was risky… (strange what little details stick in your mind all through the years ) – I had the advantage of inside information!!

Terry Hudson

Here you go

Gowans & Larsson : Spirit – Love Cannot Fail – by Terry

Terry Hudson

The Freddie Mercury of the SA

George McConnell

Marvellous – i could have used that recording if I had known it existed – a world premiere

Terry Hudson

Amazing what can be done with technology and a lockdown!
Recognise anyone in the football pic?

George McConnell

Recognise most – but putting names to them is a different matter – apart from you : Ian Kilgour, David Henderson, Major Johnston, then it gets a bit more difficult… I won’t embarrass myself by guessing the wrong people. – but wasn’t there a lot of hair around then

Terry Hudson

Well, this is me, couple of years ago

Les Miserables : Stars – by Terry

This post falls into a large number of the categories that I have outlined for this blog – not a surprise since there are a lot of different aspects of the problem that need to be challenged, addressed and considered.  The root of it all is that, for the most part, the facebook feed is full of data – and I choose that word carefully as being at the bottom of the pyramid.  There have been countless instances of “fake news” and the worrying reports of ‘interference’ in elections by foreign actors are – I think – almost certainly true.  The only conclusion is that we cannot rely on the data carrying any information.

Going higher in the pyramid – it requires some careful thought to reach knowledge and – some would argue – no wisdom will ever come out of facebook.  For what it is worth I would greatly dispute that last point – but each and every person has to work quite hard to attain such a state.

In many ways the problem is no different to the pre-www days -what  has changed is that the spread of everything is so much quicker and the coverage is so much wider.  Once upon a time, if I said something to a friend it was very likely that only a few people would ever know.  Nowadays, something said to a friend can spread like wildfire around the world – even before you realise that, perhaps, it wasn’t the wisest thing to say.

The limit on characters in a tweet is also a big driver on the “lack of information” – whilst forcing brevity on some people is – to be honest – a welcome relief (said many of my readers!) – it is often difficult – if not completely impossible to provide sufficient context in so few characters.

Equally there are plenty of people around who have an attention span that probably would be tested by twitter  they need to be catered for as much as those who delve most deeply.  I must dig out the slide – in one of our presentations regarding systems engineering we talked about generalists and specialists.  Within the context of what we were discussing then we simply divided the community into those who knew a lot about a very specific subject and those who had a more superficial view of a much wider range of subjects.

The reality is that each person is a bit of a mix – and also within the generalist and specialist groupings there are those who have a greater understanding than others.  Then there are some who do not even seem to have grasped the basics of anything important – like those in America who were protesting lockdown (arguably a reasonable thing to protest about) with banners like “I need a haircut”, “massages are essential” and “Give me Liberty or Give me Covid-19” (missing the point that it would more likely be “and” rather than “or”.

For most of us though there are things we know about a lot and things that we do not have a clue about and lots of things in between.  Where facebook and the like fall down rather is changing that in any meaningful way.  It is predicated on a “you hear more of what you want to hear” sort of model where your own world view is continually reinforced by what you read.  A bit like Trump supporters who only watch Fox News or OANN I guess.  Unless you open yourself up to ‘new’ knowledge you will forever be stuck with what you think you know.

So – how to help – perhaps by posting some ‘different’ things on facebook – most won’t read them or watch them – but maybe one or two will – and that one or two may also start spreading good stuff.

Don’t get me wrong – I am certainly not saying there is no “good stuff” on facebook already – I belong to a number of groups whom I value – its just that in the daily grind that sort of thing is largely drowned out by stuff that is (probably) less important.

When I contributed a lot to LinkedIn I often saw people say to others “that doesn’t belong here – take it to facebook” when there was something that was ‘beneath’ the standards (such as they are) of LinkedIn.  Perhaps a few links here and there would enable a few facebook users to say “give me some more of that” and click the like button.

I guess that is something to do with the geographical mobility we have now – it is increasingly likely that the people who surround us at any particular point in our lives have only known us for a (relatively) small percentage of that life. As a result they don’t know about our “past” – and whilst there are some in the world who are only too pleased to have their pasts hidden, for most this means that others will be deprived of all but a limited view of our skills and capabilities.

This also goes for our relationships – “I didn’t know that you knew Y” is a similar phrase that emphasises the popular view that its a small world. I have even had “I didn’t know she was your sister” – quite a few times. It is all no surprise – for two reasons – the first is that we ourselves take these things for granted and the second is that for others there is often no reason for them to ever find out this information.

The most obvious disconnect is the temporal one that I have been talking about – things that I did thirty or forty years ago are not going to be at the forefront of the awareness of someone that I have only known for ten years!! No wonder, since many of them won’t even be at the forefront of our own awareness. However there are other disconnects.

I have talked before about the “different worlds” in which each of us operates – our family, our work colleagues, our church companions, our sports ‘playmates’ and so on (see for instance Living in Parallel Worlds). The amount of overlap between these worlds can vary between complete and nil. Without constantly recording (and replaying) what happens within each “world” there is no way that the other “worlds” can know everything about it.

That is not wrong – if my work colleagues wanted to know all about my church then they could join that world. Some worlds are more ‘closed’ than others – and each also operates such that the temporal disconnects occur. My “work life” within a ‘single company’ is such that only one person was here when I joined and is still here now. Even then there it would be difficult for us to “know” all about the other since we have both spent some time on different sites and only rarely have we worked on the same project.

So – no one knows about the wonderful job I did just a few months after joining – and I can say it was wonderful because no one can contradict me

The same is true within each of the “worlds” and is even more true across the boundaries. Indeed, there are even “worlds” that most (if not all) people who know me now would not even know that I ever belonged to.

Our knowledge of each other in the “now” is very far from complete, so it is no surprise that there are gaping holes in the knowledge we have of each other in the past. Our pasts may not be very “joined up”. There are people around who knew me “as a lad” – but few who actually could follow that “knowing” all the way through to now. There are times where our worlds were sufficiently separated to ensure that huge gaps would open up in the “completeness” of our knowing.

It would be illuminating to do an experiment – a set of true/false statements and see what pattern emerged of “who knows what” – there would also be an “I don’t know” option so that I could weed out those who were just guessing!!

So – this isn’t something to worry about – that is clear – but it is something that we must always bear in mind when we think of others. We need to be aware of our lack of insight into their lives.

Although the title is “You Don’t Know Me” it could equally have been “I Don’t Know You” or better “We Don’t Know Each Other” – where “We” is very much the collective.

I have never been overly attracted to the idea of creating such a list. Partly because there are so many things that it would be “good to do” that it would be really difficult deciding what to leave off the list!! It would seem impossible to generate a finite list. We will all, however, do some things between now and when we do indeed “kick the bucket”  How do we decide what to do?

When we are young the thought would rarely, if ever, crop up that we should do something because it might be the only chance we get before we die. Even for someone with a high awareness of their own mortality, it would be unusual to assume that life will be cut short when we are only just beginning, so to speak. As we get older, the mortality rate is, of course, higher – the mere fact that we have survived this far means that there is less time to go…..

At some point in everyone’s life there must come a realisation that the time that they have remaining is becoming limited – unlike the (seemingly) limitless opportunities in front of a teenager, for someone in their sixties, seventies or older there is only a limited time – so get out that bucket list and start ticking things off!! Not for me.

I received a “wake up” on my own mortality a few years ago – whilst I feel perfectly healthy, there is now an awareness that the length of time left for me is definitely limited. I have no idea whether it is going to be one year, ten years, twenty years or more – but it is now something that I can see on the horizon and which will only get closer.

Pondering this, I began to think through what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I think that at the time of my last treatment I was reconsidering what was ‘important’ or ‘necessary’ – and I might have alluded to some of that in previous blog entries. Why read a book? What will that ‘add’ to my life? Why watch a TV programme? Why listen to a concert? Why do anything, I guess. This is, sort of tied up with the “BIG” question – the meaning or purpose of our lives. What is the point of anything that we do? You will know from previous writings here that my answer would at least partially be that we cannot know!!

That is CANNOT not DO NOT – an important distinction.

Everything is interconnected, therefore even the smallest thing that I do can have implications that are incomprehensible to me. So, should I read that book, watch that TV programme, listen to that music? Probably yes – if it brings me enjoyment. However, that doesn’t really amount to a bucket list.

The answer that I came up with when pondering the question “what does it mean to ‘make the most’ of what is left of your life” was surprisingly (or perhaps not) simple – it was “make memories for others“.

We cannot know what the afterlife looks like – many would argue that there is no afterlife – so there is no way of knowing how to prepare ourselves for that. Nothing on that bucket list is going to make a difference – or at least it is unlikely and we can certainly not predict what would and what would not. We can be sure that we will leave people behind – our spouse, our children, maybe even our parents, our siblings, friends and acquaintances. Some of them may be glad to see the back of us!!

In whatever time we have left though we do have the opportunity to create more memories for these people – memories that include us in some way. Things that, once we are gone, they can reflect on and remember the “good times”. Things that will reduce the sense of loss – clearly memories do not fill the gap entirely, but what could be better when you lose a loved one than a whole raft of new memories, fresh in your mind.

Putting myself on the other side of the fence for a moment, the memories must be treated in a positive way. It would be easy to let a feeling of regret grow – we have all these memories – but there could have been so many more. That way lies unhappiness. It is, partly, like the “glass half full” conundrum – we can either rejoice in what memories we have, or despair in the fact that we can no longer add to them. The former way sort of pays tribute to the memories – the latter will inevitably result in them fading much more quickly.

Is this a “red thread” from beyond the grave? In some ways I guess that is exactly what I am describing. Those to whom we are most closely tethered will sense only a slight loosening of the bond when there is a good store of memories to keep it quite strong.

So, that is what we leave – for some this will be supplemented with things that are, I guess, more practical – famous authors leave books; composers leave wonderful music; the rich leave their inheritance. All of these will actually regenerate memories – each time a Beethoven symphony is played there are people who are drawn into his world and can imagine a little of what it was like to be Beethoven.

Not all of us will have this benefit though, most must be content with ‘just’ the memories – so it is important to make sure that they are maximised – and worth leaving…

Perhaps one day I will write about the other side of the coin – what happens to our own memories when we die – that is a much harder question to address.