There are a few thoughts that stuck after a great and memorable class reunion of our high school classes 40 years after we finished high school.

So I would sketch this as first idea. Not yet a finished or refined ink drawing, far from it, but a start of an idea. I usually started projects with drafting some ideas.

Then with use of contemporary AI I would use my sketch to map out a wood carving to memorize this once in a lifetime event.

So, as we also touched upon that evening, I still pursue some artwork ideas. Differently from back then, that too.

Things have a due date, and that due date is normally now or soon

So if there’s a thing you felt about someone and you kept that to yourself, at some point it will be beyond irrelevant. I am amazed some girl fourty years ago liked my red hair but then I’m sixty now and me as well as my wife think a bald shave is the way to go. We thought so since quite a while. If you work extensive shifts, when I swam competes, all those years, I did not like no hair to get in my way. But such is life. If there ever was something nice you could have said, the value of that will run out. Say it now if you can.

Or keep it to yourself. Because then there are these great beautiful souls, also among my fellow pupils at school, whom I always loved, but then, I never would tell them. That, too.

I don’t remember things the same way as others and the other way around

For me, life as kid was definitely troubled. At home. Elsewhere, not so much.

So my past and what I put emphasis on or valued, or not, in all likelihood, was quite different from others’ experiences. Some remembered my obession with playing the guitar. Some remembered our many drawings and cartoons.

No one however remembered that I spend extensive time swimming and playing water polo, after which I did not take that school wide mini triathlon too seriously that we did at some stage, all >600 pupils, I even flunked that evening “party” then – but as it turned out then, I’d won that event. At that point in time it was clear that some life lines definitely were on the brink of diverging. So without much reference to my past I had gone back to now rather seriously swimming competes in 2009 or so, until 2016, with some great successes there. Not of wider interest, I know.

You make choices, or not, and then your choices or the lack thereof  make you

So what choice to take is /was a penultimate life test. Because most importantly, school misses out to teach some really important things. No one teaches you exponential progress of habits. No one teaches you the need to truly focus and reflect. For obtaining different or wider views. No one teaches you about your actual health – mental and physical. You may or may not pick that up along the way. But then, that seemed obvious at the time.

Life is a bitch and then you die. Life is one continuous rage. Or whatever. Can’t have everything, but pray tell, did you make the most of it?

We are ourselves, for better or worse, as one of the eternal truisms. If we are an opportunistic character or a straightforward hard ass, either way, that probably tends to stay.  If we were always the ones to screw others over, then maybe that also stayed. When we found joy in creating art, in entertaining or providing for others, that maybe stayed, too. Some smiles managed to stay over four decades, that was beautiful to see.

So, 40 years down. Did you make the most of it? What does that mean: “Did you use the opportunity, time, or situation as well as you could?” And definitely, we did have some really good and interesting talks.

All art on this page (C) Copyright Wolf Schweitzer

Keywords Kantonschule Hohe Promenade [wikipedia] Maturjahrgang 1986 Hopro Zürich