Heart and Mind

Finding People on the Web Who You Used to Know

"Life is a series of people coming in and out of your world."

Someone once told me that. I think. Or maybe I read it somewhere. Or maybe I just came up with that musing on my own, although that's the least likely scenario.

At any rate, I think about those sentiments a lot, because they're really true. Sometimes it boggles my mind to think about the people who I am not in touch with any more. Sometimes I just find it amazing when I think of the sheer numbers of people that have passed through my world in some way, shape, or form.

Your life might be defined by, among other things, who you are and what you do, but the people with whom you interact while you're busy being yourself and doing whatever it is you do play a big role in that.

The web, obviously, is a great place to scout out people who you used to know. I admit to sometimes "googling" people I haven't seen in years when their names cross my mind. There's something that seems a little stalker-ish about it, but it's really quite innocent. It's mostly nostalgia and a bit of curiosity.

Sometimes I also come across people that I wasn't specifically looking for, like on MySpace and places like that.

When you think about it, you've known a lot of people in your life, haven't you? You know them from certain places you've been. Where? Well, the example that's most obvious is your old school days: high school friends, junior high friends, or even earlier. You can go back as far as you'd like and you'll probably find folks that were in your life either for a short while or a long while, but they're not they're now. And you've got people that you knew a little, people that you knew a lot, and people who fall into lots of categories in between.

But there also are other places beyond school where you've known people from. Think of your past jobs. Jobs are loaded with people that are there for a while and then they're gone. Maybe you kept in touch with a few, but most you didn't. Maybe some you kept in touch with longer than others, but there are a whole bunch out there who you simply lost touch with eventually. And I'm not just talking about "real" jobs. Think of every burger-flipping-type job you had as a teenager and think about some of the characters you met back then.

I guess one of the things I'm trying to say is that there is room for all sorts of relationships in your life, and I kind of include them all in the "people I used to know" category. Not every "person I used to know" who I stumble across on the web is someone who I considered one of my best friends in the world. Some were, some were lesser grade friends, some were acquaintances, and some I just knew of. But here's the crux of this all: finding "people I used to know" fascinates me no matter which "level" they fall into, and it all seems trippy, surreal, and crazy at the same time. Here's why...

First, the "fascinating" part, because that's easy: it's great fun to indulge your curiosity and get that glimpse into someone's world in the present day.

Now, here's the "trippy, surreal, and crazy" part. If you're talking about someone who was on the low-level-end of the scale, where I knew of them or maybe knew them a little, it's just odd to me that they still exist. Do you get that? I mean, rationally, I know that barring a tragedy, they should still be alive and living somewhere...but in my world, they ceased to exist when I stopped seeing them. So, even if only in your subconscious, everyone is exactly where you left them: looking and living like they did when you were in school together or working next to each other at some job. But...son of a gun...there they are right on your screen, looking just like themselves, but older and changed. They might be broader, grayer, or balder; or they have more lines on their faces or a more modern haircut. And none of this should suggest they look bad. They just look older and different, despite still looking like themselves. And in one fell swoop it drives home the point: wow...you've been living a life somewhere for the last 20 years! Where the heck have you been?

That's for the "low-level" category, and as you slide up the scale towards the people you knew really well, the weirdness increasingly becomes more of this kind of thinking...

For people that I really, really knew well and was very tight with, I think it just blows my mind to know end to fathom how I could have known someone so well at one point and not know ANYTHING about them anymore. "Oh, I see 'Chris' got married." "Oh, I see 'Chris' lives in Utah." I mean, these are not trivial bits of information like " 'Chris' enjoys mushrooms on pizza." These are the very basics of one's life, and if 'Chris' was someone you knew so well at one point—well enough to have been a major, major chapter (or multiple chapters) in the book of your life—how could you not know this stuff anymore? Isn't it the same person (at least in a literal sense)? Aren't you the same person?

I think this entire blog entry has been an effort to ultimately get to this last point, so I will hammer it home by reiterating it through a simple hypothetical example:

I have known, and loved, and shared my life with people in situations where we were so integral to each other's existence that if you were to make a documentary about their lives (like an A&E Biography or something), you would absolutely have to have me as a resource and interviewee if you wanted to do the story right as it pertains to the part of the tale where I was there. (Where not talking to me would be like making a "John Lennon—The Beatles Years" documentary and not interviewing Paul McCartney.) And yet, I couldn't tell you a fucking thing about what these people's lives are all about these days. And these are situations where there was no "fall out." Just time, distance, busy lives, and small changes within ourselves as we've evolved through life have made things the way they are. No animosity, nothing bad. Just life evolving. And I know nothing about these people, and they know nothing about me.

Blows my mind.

posted by Steve @ 4:53 PM