Principles

 Our strongest bonds are made in childhood. I think the reasons for that are simple enough, trust and innocence. As we grow up, we gradually lose those attributes, calling it maturity. We do become cautious, skeptical and somewhat jaded. Things just don't stick as readily. We just move on, absorbing the blows as a part of living. We expect it, anticipate it, and grow stronger. But as the years go by, we will weaken, becoming nostalgic, remembering what once was. The things that we cling to, those deeply rooted, were formed in our childhood. We return to those in our mind to find comfort in an ever changing world. Old friends, comfort foods and memories.

 When I was eighteen, I joined the Navy and left home. I became disconnected from that place over the years. Over the next twenty two years I moved from place to place, meeting new people and then moving on. Thirty years have passed since those days and I have yet to meet any of those folks again. There are no bonds there, just memories, my memories. I discovered some years ago that home wasn't where I had left it. I went back for a short time to only find strangers living there. Oh, I did see a couple of old friends and classmates, passed them on the street as they went their way. My oldest friends still holding a place in my heart. 

  Then social media came along and the opportunity to reconnect, and to make connections to that past presented itself. I joined in wholeheartedly in the early days of the internet, with AOL and those infamous chat rooms. Talked to a lot of people but never found anyone I knew personally in any of those rooms. Facebook appeared and the game was changed. I did find those that I knew on that platform. I joined in a group that consisted of old classmates. Classmates in this sense meaning those that attended the same schools as myself, not necessarily at the same time.   There were those that I did go to class with as well, those that I knew by name, and they knew mine. We hadn't traveled in the same circles back then but we were aware. Didn't take long for me to understand why I hadn't traveled in the same circles as those folks. We had differences! That's all I am going to say about that, we had differences. Those differences were rooted in the past, formed years ago. The principles embraced were learned in early childhood. Those principles formed the bonds. Principles learned from grandparents, parents, and siblings. It is the birds of a feather thing.

 There are times when I am nostalgic for the good old days. Those days are always the days of my youth. We all tend to remember the good times just a little better than they actually were. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I find myself wondering what if. What if I hadn't joined the Navy. What if I had stayed "home." What would my life be like today? But then at other times I think, lucky for me I left that place. I did go back for a short time and discovered then that home wasn't where I had left it at all. The places were familiar, my oldest friends were still the same, but all the others had changed. I guess what I discovered was you can't go back to high school. That is what is remembered, the years leading up to that. Everything is different when that ends. 

  That ended for me fifty one years ago. A half century ago. Everything has changed and yet remains the same. One moment it seems like yesterday and at others, well, over fifty years ago. It does seem to me that people haven't really changed all that much. That is, the ones I have interacted with anyway. Now that we have all "matured" and set aside the biases learned in youth that is. The thing is determining what are biases and what are principles. The two are often confused. Bonds are formed on principle, division on bias. Principles are a code or law, personal law. The word derives from the Latin word, princeps. It means the first or the original. That's something to think about. What are your principles?