All Roads Lead to Rome*----Uh, Athens
“The ancient Romans built an amazing network of roads everywhere they went, such that roads from every city eventually led back to Rome. This gave rise to the famous saying ‘All roads lead to Rome’, which simply means that there are different paths and ways to reach the same goal.”*
The above quote is often used, because back in the day of the Roman Empire it did indeed seem all roads DID lead to Rome. It popped into my head the other day as a title for this piece and when I researched it (as I do all things that are curious or unknown to me) I found the above quote and found it meant just another way of saying that there are different paths/ways to reach the same goal.
And as I sat at the lunch table the other day, it did seem like a truism. The group that had gathered had taken various paths to bring us to my favorite pizza place in town—Athens Pizza. The group I mention? Well, that is an assemblage of women who were classmates when we all graduated from high school in 1965. Most are in their 70’s, so we had lived lives in the same time frame, but had as a group journeyed oh, so many paths to come to that exact point on that exact day.
Several in this group had met a while back for lunch and had so much fun that they decided this needed to become an event for any and all who could make it. One of that group, a gal I have known since the third grade(!), volunteered to be the point person and has kept us all in touch.
That idea for a lunch event took root and we have had several wonderful lunches together. Such lunches include a quick reacquainting chat, eating, talking while eating, and talking as we prepare to depart—and some picture-taking on phones that we never could have imagined in 1965. I am sure that the group might sound akin to a gaggle of geese as we re-live high school days, talk about our lives and careers, and definitely brag about our children and grandchildren. But, what a blast!
As I sat there I mentally harked back to the past and wondered why I didn’t get to know these gals better in high school. Several reasons come to mind—I was working hard to make the grade for college, I was a little shy, and I knew everyone was prettier than I was so I just kept my head down and plodded on through. I wish I could go back as “older me” and have a heart to heart with that young woman I was—I would tell her to loosen up and trust that she wouldn’t be laughed at by everyone, or shunned by everyone and maybe she could have widened her circle of friends. But hindsight is so wonderful simply because we have trod the paths we have and become the women we are because of our varied experiences and multi-faceted lives. Undoubtedly we have morphed into people who are little different at the very least because LIFE is a great teacher and molder of souls.
But I have learned to carpe diem, another Latin phrase meaning “seize the day.” And so I do--I am SO un-shy now that I talk to any and all, I want to find out about the lives they lived, and know the women they are now. I have to say, there’s not a one that I don’t like.
There is a special friend in the group for me, one whom I have known since I was five. She is the one who, if asked, would know where “all the bodies are buried” in my life, stood by me through 3 marriages to 2 men (yes, I actually married one man a second time), knows all my friends and family, and should I find myself on my deathbed would be one of the first people to show up.
So, you see, you just can’t go any ol’ place and have such a lunch experience. But if you get the opportunity to reunite with people from the past, go, boldly, go. Be yourself, loosen up and laugh at you, and don’t live in your past. You will find that you like these classmates, that these women are more fascinating than you could imagine. You will have a whole new circle of friends—people who are like touchstones, because they soldiered through the same times that you did. Not a bad deal for the price of a lunch.