From the Bench
A CHEMISTRY LESSON ON LIFE
Last weekend, I went to a reunion of my high school class of ’48. It was
more of a "get together" than a classic reunion with all the attendant
bells and whistles which most of us would just as soon avoid.
We laugh a lot when we get together. Not what you would expect from a group
of people in their seventies. After all, there is not much that is funny
about arthritis, high blood pressure, heart bypass. I will stop there……don't
want this to read like the New England Journal of Medicine.
And even though we did talk about ailments….ours as well as those of other
classmates who couldn’t make it…..we didn’t spend the evening dwelling on
it, and when the evening was over and it was time to leave, we exited laughing.
Wonder why that is? I have thought a lot about it, and we touched on it
some that night. There was just something special about the class of ’48.
Someone observed that there were no lawyers or politicians in our class.
Maybe that had something to do with it.
Doctors? We had at least two. Accountants and CPAs? Several of those. Engineers?
Salesmen? Technicians? Secretaries? All were represented. But no lawyers
and/or politicians, leastwise not that we could recall. If there were any,
they either didn’t attend or were keeping it quiet.
Watching all the campaign rhetoric we have had to endure through a dry,
hot summer, it occurred to me that politicians take themselves much too
seriously. I suspect that many of them believe what their supporters say
about them. Which makes them, for the most part, pompous asses…..folks who
can’t see their own foibles and will never be caught laughing at themselves.
These types can put a crimp on a social gathering. Being in their midst
is like a psychological pool game, all angles and bank shots.
There is something refreshing about a group where nobody is trying to make
points or play the angles. That’s what Friday night was like.
"Chemistry". That’s what it is. We hear the word used about one-on-one
relationships, but it applies to groups as well. There is some catalyst
that results in either a positive or negative reaction.
(I risk this analogy, having scraped through college chemistry more than
fifty years ago. A catalyst, as I recall, is an agent that supports or aids
a chemical reaction.)
Human catalysts are important, especially the ones who bring laughter. The
class of ’48 was lucky. We had them in good numbers.
Alas, the other kind appear to be more in season right now, making you wonder
if this is the best way to govern a nation.
And it is contagious. Election time becomes a matter of life-and-death,
almost as ugly as a Georgia-Georgia Tech football game, which, as we all
know, is much more important in the scheme of things.
Life is much too short to spend it like barnacles latching on to the egos
of little men lusting for power. Yet it is easy to get caught up into the
cauldron of politics with all its catalysts that transform us into something
we did not intend to be.
Better to spend the time among people who have nothing to prove…..nothing
to sell………no "agenda".
Better to spend it among old friends, where, on a cool evening in October,
you can visit, reminisce, and…..most of all…….exit laughing.