I've gotten some nice feedback from folks who say that what I've written about my reunion makes them less worried about their own. It made me think about that low-grade dread I had before this one, alongside the excitement and anticipation. How come reunions make us anxious?
I have a hypothesis about this, but it's not fully formed yet. I think it's related to shame, which I have been thinking about recently. I think both shame and reunion-dread come from a sense of a discrepancy between our own potential and what we have actually done. A sense of what we could be (and imagine we "should" be) and what we are, and of the gulf between them. If we were better somehow, we'd be more like what we should and could be, and less like we are.
Maybe when I get it more fully figured out I'll write something more profound. The thing that makes shame go away, as far as I've figured out, is sunlight: not hiding the way you actually are, not cowering in the face of your own imagined better self, or the presumed expectations of others. Reunions can act as that sunlight. You show up imagining that your peers have all reached their own potential and know yours, and will judge you for what you have not become. But what you find is that they love what you are, and they're interested in what you have become, and that your real self, bumping along the paths you've chosen and shrugging and turning around when you hit a blind alley, is as loveable and interesting as any aspirational person you could have become.
A nice thought. I like it. It goes both ways, too; the successful ones (presumably) don't go back to reunion to show off how successful they are, but to reconnect with the people they once were... just like those who perceive themselves as less successful.
Posted by: pjm | June 06, 2005 at 01:49 PM
Thank you for this. You've wonderfully distilled what shame is and how to combat it. It struck a chord for sure, and I like your remedy.
Posted by: Emily | June 06, 2005 at 02:28 PM
I think that you have touched upon the secret to confidence generally, not just in the reunion context. When I got fired from my first job as an attorney after less than a year, I made a decided to tell everyone in my community, including judges, opposing counsel, friends, family, potential employers, everyone, exactly what had happened. Even though my honesty may have cost me some job opportunities back then, it just felt right to be straightforward rather than slink around and try to cover up the truth. Since then I have had a lot of people tell me they view my resilience in response to that early setback as a sign of character and I think it has actually enhanced my professional reputation. Most importantly, though, telling people the truth was indeed the perfect antidote to shame.
Posted by: cmc | June 06, 2005 at 04:09 PM
Hey, I just realized. I had dinner last week with a friend of mine who was in town from Ohio en route to his Yale reunion. I guess you guys were at the same place.
Posted by: Lawgirl | June 06, 2005 at 04:09 PM
I think there also might be some relationship to the type of school you attended. For example, my high school wasn't a particularly great one, and so while I expect a few of my classmates will have done exceptionally well, I know for a fact that the vast majority won't be much more rich/ powerful/ famous than I. However, I'd expect more "Wow, that's amazing" at my college reunion, because I went to a fairly good college, and also at my law school reunion. (Except that with law school, most people will be in the law and there's a limited range of cool stuff to do there, whereas the undergrad folks will be doing a huge range of things like curing diseases and producing TV shows).
Have you attended a high school or law school reunion yet?
Posted by: PG | June 10, 2005 at 07:09 AM