The Column February 2008

I heard recently that my ex-girlfriend is getting married. That isn’t to say that this is the last girlfriend I’ve had, but rather, the one that I refer to as ‘The Ex’, a combination of us being together during some formative years and the formative impact that we had on each other. Or possibly, the converse is the truer phrase, and it was the lack of formative impact that we had on each other that was the real problem.

It is not something that intensely bothers me. She is moving on, making a vow, has the house and the stable job and the stable fiancé. But ostensibly, and compared to say, me, she is advancing. Earning more, making progress and collected a stock of what society calls milestones. It got me thinking as to the relationship that so many of us, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, maintain day in and day out. I got to thinking about the relationship that we have with our company and the relationships that we have with our ex-companies.

What happens when a company we leave behind does much better than we expected, than we thought could happen back in the days when it felt like we were rats with savoir faire leaving a sinking ship? And what happens when the bed of relationships and friendships made in an office dwindle to nothing, when the adage is pushed into action, when no longer is it absence makes the heart grow fonder but rather out of sight, out of mind?

They say that you never step into the same river twice and it is wise to bear that in mind, be as it may because rivers flow on and you stay on the bank stepping in with increasingly wet clothes and tired legs. What you left behind remains what you left behind because what use disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves, we don’t know. It’s a paraphrase, yes: a borrowing. To borrow some more, looking back, for better or worse, richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, looking back is still looking back. It means that your head is turned, that your heart is nostalgic, that you’re stepping back into a river that long ago carried the atoms of that past you to some distant sea – all of this, yes, and what’s more, you are not looking forward.

 

 

Gurdeep Mattu