When I lived and worked in France, I shared a cubicle with several people, including someone who was a contractor to one of the corporate partners in the Alliance that prompted my expatriate assignment. This person was an almost painfully young Frenchman with whom I, as a soon to be 40 year-old-man at the time, had precious little in common with due to the chasm created by both age and culture. In the past few weeks, I frequently wonder what has become of him in his quest to gain more credentials through the (to me, anyway) Byzantine French system of college degrees. I do not know the answer to my questions because in my life I seem to have difficulties creating many permanent ties, and I know it is simply a facet of who I am, sadly enough.

It is nearly a year since I left France, and while I have tried in some small way to keep in communication with those friends I left behind, it has been very difficult. The immediate tasks presented by the death of my father, my engagement and subsequent marriage to a single mom who had two children who were incipient teenagers (the kids are great, but they are getting to the age where things are “complicated’), the building of a new house for my new family, and keeping down my day job to pay the bills in the midst of all the associated chaos and required overseeing of the new construction gave me more than sufficient reason to neglect the maintenance needed to keep fragile new friendships alive.

This December my company is flying me to San Francisco to attend the premier conference for my industry, and some of those with whom I worked in France will be there, either as presenters or as session chairs (believe me, if you don’t know what a “session chair” is, you do NOT want to know, because it will peg your geek meter beyond 11). I am definitely looking forward to seeing those folks again, especially those with whom I shared hobbies like photography, because I have allowed those contacts to lapse to my regret. For me, it seems that I have only a limited bandwidth to keep long-distance relationships going, even those that I would prefer to remain active.

It comes down to a matter of trade-offs, because we all have limitations. There are only so many hours in a day, so much energy in a person, so much time we can spend concentrating and thinking, and although we all have different levels of talents, regardless of those factors it comes down to trade-offs, what are we wiling to devote our limited supply of energy towards. Since my new life has required much more energy than I in my foolish optimism had hoped, I have not been able to break my previous tendency to lose touch with those out of sight, and therefore out of mind, and I have lost touch with those who I would have liked to have kept in my personal communication loop.

It is very sobering coming up against a limitation such as this, especially for one who once seemed to have infinite energy to argue any cause. Such is the fate of us all who are privileged to live long enough to recognize it.