Futility vs. Utility of Catching Up

Yet another time, this friend down the road said, “I will come around knocking at your door to make a time to catch up.”

And yet again I wondered about the futility versus utility of catching up. This issue bothers me now when I am in my forties. However this query always bothered me as I started engaging with existential stuff.

In the youth there was some thrill, excitement about meeting up all sorts of people who I befriended at work, bumped into them walking down the street or having met them at an event.

I was single, available and purposeless – or you can say trying to figure out the purpose of it all. Everything else was secondary – career, partner, good food, good clothes, nice car, house, looks – all that mattered to me then was to change the world and to talk hours about injustices, to begin within my home country.

But then as it happens, I too got strayed from the dream path owing to ever rising pressure of making sure that I had some pennies on me, had a roof over my head and some semblance of a career. It went on and on and here I am today – same person with lot more experience of life, have a roof over my head, food in my pantry and some work to keep me busy. But I have lost the charm about meeting up with friends, catching up over a cup of coffee, going for a drink or a walk in the park.

I am back in my second home Sydney after a gap of four years and fondly remembered so many connections I had made here over nine years when I lived here.

With my friends in India, I talked of my mates in Australia as members of my global family. I felt that a kind of invisible force of support, empathy and kinship existed for me to go to sleep with. A kind of precious heirloom not handed down by an ancestor but my own legacy. I thought, it really didn’t matter how I have progressed materialistically or what brought me back – my mates here would still like to catch up as they should be as interested in me as I was in them.

I started looking up for some mates with lot of excitement and enthusiasm but more I tried to reconnect more I became aware of futility of it all. A rolling stone gathers no moss, I have been told by many people across the continents.