Spot the difference

Well the wedding party came and went without a hitch. The boobs behaved nicely and no double-sided tape was needed to contain them to the dress. The feet survived 6 hours of dancing in high-heels and I went home with a napkin full of phonenumbers of people I had not seen in 8 to 12 years. It's striking how much people change and don't change if you've not seen them for so long. It's almost like a before-and-after shot in a magazine make-over. The "before" shot being the one in your memories, the "after" standing right in front of you. And within seconds the game of "spot-the-difference" takes shape.

The fragile wee boy that got picked on in class every day is now a 1m90 athlete with the most attractive smile-wrinkles around the eyes but he still story-tells with as much spark & fantasy as he ever did. And the alternative strong-willed brainiac that hung out in our local youth-club every weekend, has now become an investment broker in charge of 1.2 billion euros worth of stock each day but he still has that feisty warrior glint in his eyes.

-Spot the Differences-

Our stories are all still the same. Though we've all evolved away from our familiar common ground to more or lesser degrees, 10 years on, we seem to meet again on equally common ground, albeit a less familiar one. Our plots seem to all run parallel in the playing field of twenty-somethings going on thirties. Conversations are all probative. No one seems to speak with arrogant confidence, because realistically, no one seems to be a hundred percent sure of what they're doing or where they're heading. And it's comforting as much as it isn't.

But then the collective moves onto the dancefloor and the DJ regresses us. The grown-apart older generation steps off the dancefloor and we're all connected once again. And I suddenly see the appeal of reunions: at some point you stop focussing on the time that's passed. You stop focussing on the future. You stop defining. When the 26-year old consultant dives into a "pogo" with his former best mate, he's no longer defined by his job, his relationship,... he's simply defined by life. And when at 6am we make our way home, the only difference we can really spot is that our bikes have grown into cars.

Todays Mp3-repeat: Muse - Supermassive Black Hole