Chance Meetings

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Yesterday I met someone I used to go to high school with. And just like some twenty years ago it seemed to be a chance meeting right in front of my house...

He is a gentle soul. In our high school days he used to be a socially involved person. Always busy for the greater good, yet never made it to president of the student body. In my mind’s eye I can still see him walking the hallways ~ always organizing something. And although I could grasp the concept of those things that were obviously so important to him ~ even in those days ~ I never quite understood what he was all about.

Then, some twenty years ago he suddenly showed up.

I remember it as a beautiful Summer afternoon. I was enjoying the sunshine ~ watching life go by on the street ~ and suddenly there he was.
He hadn’t changed much. He was still busy organizing things. At that time it never became clear to me whether he was doing those things as a volunteer or if he had made his profession out of organizing events.
I’m not sure how it happened, but before we went downtown to have a drink and catch up, we went by his apartment. It was a sight to behold. Even after all those years I can still feel the astonishment about the amount of ‘stuff’ he had stacked up everywhere...

And yesterday, after another twenty years or so ~ there he was again, right as I parked my car. I’m not certain whether he came through this street in a feeble attempt to meet again ~ or if it was the ‘give-away-store’ a couple of doors down from my house that made him come this way. He had obviously found himself a couple of books someone was giving away.

At first I hardly recognized him. Dressed in casual clothes that looked like they had seen better days; a thick layer of wavy brown hair hanging to well over his shoulders ~ he was the picture of a late 70’s activist; almost like he didn’t belong...

When we greeted each other and talked for a while, I noticed his pinpoint pupils intensely focused on my face, and his inability to move forward to the present from where we left off after drinks, twenty years ago ~ although I have to admit, he had a great recollection of that meeting, what we talked about and things like that.

In a sense it was sad, meeting him like that.
I had always known him organizing things, events. And somehow he has not been able to organize his life  in a way that brings him happiness. He still knows lots of people, he still reads up on what is happening in the world today. Yet he seemed to have given up on himself. A person who seems lost, wandering from one chance meeting to the next...
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