Stock Inventory

My 20 year high school reunion looms in July but I’m not going.

Mostly, because of travel costs and time. My grandfather is ill, dying in fact, and when he passes we’ll have to make the three day journey to Minot a month before the reunion. It’s just too far a distance to return a few weeks later.

Honestly though, if I did have the time and money was no object, I’d likely still not go. As I look back now, leaving the town I grew up in, Minot, North Dakota, was one of the most important decisions I ever made in my life. A year and half ago, I flew up to Minot to visit my best high friends. It was great seeing everyone but when I returned, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the trip was somehow a step back for me.

You see, the people I hung out with in high school were some of the best and brightest of the city. Maybe even the entire state (yeah, it’s a small state). Nearly all of them left Minot themselves and lead highly productive lives as doctors, writers, teachers, and brokers. Hanging out with them again made me feel embarrassed for what I had to show for myself.

Stupid, I know. Nevertheless.

The crux of the problem, of course, is tempering my accomplishments against theirs. Even in high school, I had to perform this feat on a routine basis. When everyone split up during college, feelings I had of inferiority faded. Outside the gravitational pull of their shine, I flourished as a student--even if I made the worst of degree choices. And even worse relationship choices.

By the time I moved down to Houston in my late twenties, I hardly thought of my old high school friends. I had lost contact with almost all of them. Completely unknown in Houston, I forged a new life, a new career, a new relationship (yup, Wifezilla). No one knew me in Houston and so everything I did was judged outside the context of my hometown. The previous twenty-four years of my life were completely nonexistent to them, not even forgotten or buried, but thoroughly blank. Is there anything sweeter in life than the clean slate of a fresh start?

So hearing these voices from the past makes me struggle with all those old perceptions I have of myself. And the perceptions I think my high school friends have of me. It’s a strange, disorientating feeling. It’s what I imagine a mid-life crisis must feel like, as I scramble to take stock of the last fifteen years of my life and inventory the value of it all. No, scramble is too strong a word. More like ruminate.

I haven’t spent days agonizing over any of this. Each morning my two girls jump all over me is reminder enough that the stock is accounted for, the spreadsheet balanced, the valuable inventory safe. It’s been a long path to it, but I finally realize I need not judge myself against the laurels of my high school friends and instead be content with life as it is. It’s a hard thing to do—be relaxed, be at peace, be happy—but likely easier than most think to try. I suspect it’s the pining for what might have been rather than acknowledging the good from the here-and-now that breeds so much discontent in people.

Go Class of 1988.