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<p>Depends on you and your relationships. I’ve been best friends with my bff for 7 years now. 4 of them have been spent apart due to schooling. He is my soulmate and we are just as good talking over skype as IRL. We often “hang out” by skyping in to various things.</p>
<p>I always have a kid on another continent. My life is gchat, and living through hearing of their adventures. With friends, I have a life in real time as well.</p>
<p>Ages and stages. Childhood, college, beyond college. As a child you have far fewer life events to remember, as an adult you can live in the present, plan for the future and recall the past. When you get together with those from your past you tend to talk about common links, which may only be your past together. Right now you are in early adulthood and don’t realize how much living there is beyond college. Elderly people vary a lot- there are those still making memories and those who live in the past and merely exist in the present.</p>
<p>OP, I am in my 20s and I already do more recalling of memories( enjoy that while it lasts!lol!) than making new ones. I also agree that friendships or relationships are not as intense as they were when I was younger. Everything seems less bright( not in the sence of optimism) but as if things are duller.</p>
<p>As for the Chinese poets and scholars – one can imagine that, working as bureaucrat in a remote corner of China, each of them seldom had the opportunity to socialize with their intellectual and cultural peers.</p>
<p>Perhaps part of their reminiscing about old times was also discussing topics and points of view that they shared only with this small circle of old friends.</p>
<p>I say this because I attended boarding school in a third world country. When I met up with my classmates at a reunion 30 years later, it was a very special and joyful occasion, not so much because of the reminiscing but rather because of the opportunity to spend time with people who had shared and been formed by the same experiences.</p>