Re imagining The Past

 I remember a foreman who worked for me complaining that his wife had made them late for Bingo (I had no idea that this quite fierce character played Bingo) and that, if they had been on time they would have won the jackpot but the couple just in front of them did.  A few moments earlier?  Does fate work that way? I'm not entirely convinced it does.  Like the chap next to you that won a raffle prize.  If I'd have been sold those tickets before him, would I have won?  Probably not.  

It's an interesting puzzle that just recently has been cursing my brain.  My mind is quite something in that it is always computing things and I haven't really learned to stop it doing that - I can, for a short while, but it's what I do, it's how my mind works.  Being an INTJ will do that.  I have stopped worrying about the past.  Some years ago I destroyed all of the negative thoughts in my head but there's a residue at the moment and it is to do with meeting and messaging old friends from 50 years ago.

One, it turns out, lived around the corner from me in both locations I lived in.  I only met him once in all that time at the stations one day.  It wasn't my normal train journey and he recognised me not vice versa.   All that time, many decades, walking past each others houses, even going to the same pub we never bumped into each other - we could well have been on the same train, in the same pub, supermarket etc but never met!  So I found that very strange as surely in all those years we would have bumped into each other but if we weren't looking to do that or were occupied elsewhere it wouldn't happen.  Ships passing in the night so to speak.  

Then my brain started doing other stuff and what ifs.  This was around whether, had things been different, I'd have ended up with a lady that I was close to as I discussed a few posts ago.  We hung around together, went to Paris together (in a small group), went to parties, concerts and so on.  So if things had been different?  She sent over a photo of her now and I could feel my reaction to it.  But that didn't happen, it wasn't to be and that's the annoying thing really about my mind.  Here we are, it cannot be anything but what it is now.  Would meeting up now somehow even things out, could now be the beginning of what didn't happen then?  It's a complete waste of grey cells and synapses but that's what my mind is computing.

I can dream about these things, run over in my head why certain things didn't happen at the time, another friend of mine and I had an "Interesting" evening together but nothing ever came of that or thereafter. What if? 

The bottom line is, of course, none of that can be changed at all.  It was a long time ago and we all went our different ways and we lived our separate lives not knowing what the other was up to after the point we lost touch.  If it was to be, it would have happened.  This hankering for nostalgia is probably part of my writing my memories down for genealogy purposes if nothing else. And yet, my brain wants to work out what sort of life we would have had together and is curious about that.  It's a little bit creepy too if I'm honest.