1000 Weeks

Why Do Adults Need Reasons to Spend Time Together?

What a failed Bass fishing trip taught me about friendship, adulthood, and getting older.

Bass fishing in New Brunswick — Image courtesy of the author.

Last week was supposed to be something special. It wasn’t going to be a “typical” 1000 Weeks entry. It wasn’t going to be about running mileage, meals cooked, or whether the clouds would finally clear long enough for an imaging session. This week was supposed to be an adventure. Something different.

I was heading out to fish with a group of friends I had made during my postdoctoral studies. These are the kinds of friendships adulthood rarely warns you about. The kind where months or years pass. Careers change. New relationships have formed, and in some cases, old relationships have unformed. Hair has greyed, backs and knees ache, and entire phases of life have quietly come and gone.

And yet the moment you see each other again, it’s as if nothing happened at all. You simply pick up where you left off.

Anthony Bourdain once said something like, “There are friends who can call you out of the blue and say, “Meet me in this alley at midnight, and bring a gun and a tarpaulin,” and you would just go, no questions asked.” He was talking about his dear friend Eric Ripert.