Time and Space

It’s not about time and space in scientific terms or from a philosophical perspective. It’s about its effect on human relations, on friendship. It’s about “Rip Van Winkle” effect.

I grew up with my next-door neighbor as a close childhood friend. No, it’s not Huck Finn story. We grew up together talking in the same colloquial language, laughing together, climbing trees, hiding and sharing our favorite fruit when the adults were away in our poor man’s house.

Time changed. We moved on. There were oceans between us keeping us million miles away. More than three decades passed as an instant for me in a fast moving world. He raised his family in my old world. I raised mine in the new. My old world picture and the language I knew back then remained stuck at some 30 years back. Yet, the new world reshaped my out look and attitude.

Now more than 30 years later when suddenly we had an encounter, we had difficulty communicating like we used to as children. I belched out my old vocabulary for closeness. He could no longer talk like he did when we were little. After customary greetings, we struggled to communicate. Time and space got in the way. I felt like modern day “Rip van Winkle”. To him perhaps talking the old way was embarrassing. We are now aliens from two different worlds. We are friends, yet time and space has made us strangers with not as much in common.