On Laughter, Connecting, and A Reunion

Kathy Curtacci Thompson st Stonehenge

May we meet in

the center of a laugh

So we can

remember who we truly are

In beloved joy

Just call me a

friend.

From Pearl “Drops of Aloha” 
JR Coleman








My high school 50th reunion is coming up next year.  Those kind of events are always awkward. People gathering who knew each other way back when, but know nothing about each other now. An "in group" gathers to ease their own anxiety and there is laughter which the rest get to notice. Then there is the conversation with  someone who looks like no one you ever met,  and there you are without your glasses to look at the name tag. Or the person who is sharing a memory or you sharing a memory of which there is no recollection by the listener.

After the memory sharing, there has to be a moment in time when everyone gets to introduce each other as who they are today - beyond the grandchildren, what they did with their lives,  and plans for retirement. (Of course, by this reunion, there is likely to be some sharing of the meds we take and why we take them.)

One of the classmates created a page on face book and we're getting to interact before the reunion. I have really been delighted, even surprised by who my colleagues are today.

The picture of a classmate at Stonehenge was accompanied by her sharing an article she wrote about her visit to Salisbury, England. I am so grateful for her sharing who she is- and it is a great preparation for my journey to Europe next summer.

The poem at the beginning here was written by one of my classmates. I do  not remember him as a poet, artist, or otherwise spiritually orientated. Yet, this is one of the most sensitive images I have ever read.

This is so different than the memory I have of him, that I am wondering if my elder moments have gotten the best of me on this one.

I have discovered this to be true, less dramatically,  in interactions with other classmates as well.

I went to the 40th reunion, hell bent on presenting myself as the person I had become.  I spent a lot of time as a teenager hiding my social anxiety in spirits. I can honestly say, and could also say ten years ago,  that is no longer the case.  Now, I just hide or abide!!

Well, at that reunion, when it was time to introduce myself, I started with, "When I was in high school, I was a slut." The laughter which broke out as a result urged me on into a monologue accompanied with much laughter.  I felt really connected with these strangers, the same human beings who I spent five days a week with for many years. We met in the center of a laugh.

Afterwards, I was embarrassed, for exposing myself so honestly. I felt like that a lot in high school. I suspect most of us did. It wasn't about actions, big make out that I was. It was about preoccupations,  feelings, and self-perception.

I have enough training and experience in psychology to know that what I was saying was not about actions. It was about being a  self-conscious, not yet fully formed Self. And there I was, forty years later, finally confident enough to strut my stuff like never before.

Because of classmates with whom I have shared the journey into the world of Spirit over the years, without even knowing one another, I really am looking forward to this 50th reunion.

It will be more like a gathering of the clan, here on the other end of a life's time.

I hope there is dancing at this reunion. It will be a most appropriate ritual of Being who we are.

How have you experienced laughter as a source of connecting you with others?