Top 5s, and all the rest

Last night I had a dream about people I haven’t thought about in years - several people I lived with in Myers Hall at the University of Georgia my freshman year, but haven’t kept in touch with, not even on Facebook. They were a few of the first people I met in college - some lived across the hall from me, some were friends of theirs. We bonded over things in common - our shared love for R.E.M., our majors, etc - and for a while we saw each other regularly and were friends. Then we met other people, got busy studying for exams, deliberating whether our newly selected directions in life were the right ones, etc, and spent less time together. And now, these particular people are no longer in my life. 

But they’re still part of me, because last night, they were hanging out with me in the YouTube cafe, and we were on our way to an offsite and celebrating someone’s birthday with a Bi-Rite pie all at the same time. It was strange because I haven’t thought of their names or faces in years, possibly more than a decade, and yet there they were, hanging out somewhere in my unconscious mind.

As I laid in bed and reflected on the dream, I started going through all the years individually, starting in college, next through my travels in Fiji and Australia, then moving into my decade in New York City, my now two years in San Francisco, my experiences at Google, and all the far-flung international travel in between. There have been so many people who have come in and out of my life, whose roles varied in significance, who grew to be more or less important. It’s something I’m conscious of when I see the absolute number of Facebook friends listed on my timeline, but when I start to think about them all individually, their faces, the memories we shared, the effects of those relationships I carry with me to this day, I start to feel almost overwhelmed. 

The last Facebook post I shared was about a website called Polygraph, which is an audio visualization of how music taste has evolved over time. It runs you through the top five hits of every year since the 1950s, and plays and changes the top hit when it changed over time. Playing with it the other day brought on this huge barrage of feelings - all these songs I hadn’t heard in years in some cases were suddenly bringing up memories and their associated emotions so vividly that they felt as if they’d just happened. 

I realized then that people are like that too. There’s this quote that floats around from time to time, with the idea being that you are the average of the top five people you spend the most time with. But those top five change all the time, based on proximity and experiences and time commitments and changes in group dynamics, so in reality, you’re the sum of a multitude of people you’ve shared time and location with throughout your life. People come into your life, and sometimes they leave your life forever, yet as my dream illustrated for me, everyone stays in there somewhere, and so everyone must have an effect, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

If that’s the case, I am extremely grateful to be the sum of so many of you strange and wonderful people. I’m grateful for you all - those of you with whom I have shared experiences both exceptional and mundane, who have talked to me late into the night about your dreams and fears, who have listened to my dreams and fears in return. I’m thankful for those who were close long ago and who remain close, for those who were distant and grew closer when we got enough experience to gain perspective, for those who are newer but equally as important. I’m grateful for those I may have met only once but changed my life forever, for those I expected to meet only once but then ran into again years later and halfway around the world, for those I have known only casually but who have said something once that forever changed my perspective. 

I wish we had a way to recognize the moment that will be the last moment we’ll ever physically see any given individual. If we knew that, we could take that opportunity to pause and reflect on what we’ve meant to one another; we could take a minute to give each other a huge hug and say “thank you” for what we’ve given one another, which is doubtless more than we’ll even realize at the time.

Since I won’t ever be able to do that, I’m trying to do what I can now. I hope you’re all doing well, that you’re healthy and happy. I’m grateful for you. You make me who I am.