How reconnecting with old friends can extend your life and increase your happiness
Courtesy / Marshall Communications
Ann Leamon, left, and Nancy Marshall
Gordon Lightfoot may have said it best when he sang, “It’s so nice to meet an old friend."
We couldn’t agree more. While the late singer-songwriter may be angling for news about a former sweetheart in "Did She Mention My Name," we’ve reconnected across the many decades since graduating together from high school. And we’re wondering why we didn’t do it earlier.
The Department of Health and Human Services classifies loneliness as a health risk comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Making new friends as an adult is hard. But as our experience demonstrates, you don’t have to start at the beginning. You can renew connections that have lapsed, whether from high school or college or even previous jobs.
The two of us had occasionally crossed paths since graduating from Hebron Academy. Ann’s company used mine for some website work in 2015 or so. We’d been in touch about a get-together for our graduating class that never happened.
We ran into each other — almost literally, given the narrow aisles — at Hannaford in the town where Ann lives and Nancy has a camp. We recognized each other, but we were on the path of, “Oh, we have to get together sometime.” Often, "sometime" never comes.
Until it did. Nancy issued a last-minute invitation to Ann and her husband for a boat ride on the lake. They couldn’t make it then but reciprocated. After a few near misses, we managed to get together to go kayaking at her place on the Medomak River.
We talked nonstop for two hours, started subjects, dropped them in favor of others, zigged, zagged in the kayaks, and our conversations. We ended up watching a bald eagle sitting on a rock through a pair of binoculars with a cold beverage on the deck as the sun set and vowing we would get together again soon. Ann had welcomed Nancy as a familiar stranger, and we left friends.
Re-making friends
How do you go about remaking friends? Some historic friendships terminate for obvious reasons — betrayal or fierce disagreement. Some attenuate over time or distance or distractions. But they can be revived.
Here are some ways to reconnect with old friends:
Geography. Ann and I were not very close in high school—Ann was a day student while I was a boarder for only one year, which created a wide gulf of experience—but we kept in some sort of touch due to our backgrounds and the fact that we were both women business owners. Once we bumped into each other in Hannaford’s and realized we lived 20 minutes apart in the summertime, it was a lot easier to connect.
Accessibility. While Ann and I are both women business owners, our industries are very different. But because Nancy kept building her brand through social media and the news media (such as this column in Mainebiz), it wasn’t hard for Ann to follow Nancy. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X all provide great ways to reconnect with people from your past.
Continuity. Ann sends holiday e-cards to prior clients and business friends. It guarantees that these people at least know her email and that she’s thinking of them. After receiving her card last year, someone reached out to her to ask what she was doing and now she’s working on a project with them. I send several hundred real holiday cards in the mail with a postage stamp and Ann will now officially be on my list.
Regularity. Ann has a friend whom she met while serving on a board. He initiates quarterly check-in calls with many of his contacts. She’s become personal friends with him and his wife, and if she becomes aware she hasn’t heard from him, she’ll be the initiator. “We keep trying to find a project to do together,” she says, “but in the interim, I can learn what baseball parks he’s visited, and l tell him what I’m up to.” Without this regular check-in, they would probably have drifted apart.
Determination. “Just do it!” Have that lunch or coffee, make that call, go kayaking. At least you’ve had that lunch; you needed to eat anyway. You may depart knowing exactly why you haven’t been in touch with that person. But perhaps you’ll leave, as we did, looking forward to seeing each other again and planning to co-author an article.
The old song from Girl Scouts was right: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”
Even if those old friendships have become a little dusty, or if they weren’t super tight to start, you may find you click in new ways thanks to shared life experiences or a greater appreciation of each other and what you’ve gone through.
What do you have to lose? Who knows? Maybe Nancy and Ann will be leading the line dancing classes at a nursing home someday where they will live a long and happy life!
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments