Fifty years after graduating from high school, more than a hundred of us gathered to reunite. On the surface, it was just a party— name tags with High School portraits, vaguely familiar faces, and a buffet of nostalgia. But beneath the laughter and small talk was something deeper: a collective act of revisiting where we began. We weren’t merely attending a reunion; we were returning to our origins, testing whether time had taught us to see our beginnings with compassion.
The evening was full of pleasant surprises. People I once thought barely noticed me recalled meaningful moments we shared. Women who I imagined saw me as invisible were eager to talk. There was a generosity of spirit in the room, as if the decades had softened our judgments. Perhaps that open-heartedness allowed many of us to reflect on the challenges of being a teenager, when our sense of self was fragile and our understanding of others was incomplete.
It turns out high school wasn’t the shining highlight we once believed it should be. Those who seemed confident admitted they were insecure; those who appeared carefree confessed to loneliness. Even the so-called “cool kids” carried hidden burdens. As we revisited those shared hallways through memory, we realized that what divided us then was mostly illusion. We had all been searching for belonging, each of us believing we were the only ones unsure.
Janis Ian sang in the 1970s, “Love was meant for beauty queens.” Her song At Seventeen captured the ache of our adolescence—but she never wrote the verse about redemption. That song might sound more like Amy Yares’s “Begin to Begin Again,” a melody that calls us to learn, to grow, and to keep striving to become better people. That night, surrounded by familiar strangers, we were doing just that: beginning again.
On a wall hung the names of classmates who had died. We stood before that list in reverence, remembering that time is both thief and teacher. The list of the lost urged us to reconnect and to find meaning while we still can.
How fitting that this reunion came just as we begin reading the Torah anew—from Bereishit, from the very beginning. Each year we return to the same words, yet they reveal new wisdom because we have changed. So too with our lives: revisiting the past allows us to uncover grace, forgiveness, and understanding.
Perhaps the song to sing now is, “I learned the truth at sixty-seven—that love was meant for all of us.” Because to return, to remember, and to reconnect—is to begin to begin again.
Rabbi Evan J. Krame
If this reflection resonates with you, consider sharing it on social media—or simply take a moment to reflect on how you can create a better community.
