Catching Up

It was a simple coffee, one of the standards of my social life, scheduled at a time and place that worked with work, for a duration that allowed for kid commitments and job commitments, that was not for job exploration or unemployment comparison. This little coffee was simply for the purpose of catching up.
 
What is there to catch up? Well, when you live a life like mine, there is almost always a feeling of never being caught up. Yet, aside from the day-to-day race, there is a several decade career behind me, so when I reconnect with someone who has been a part of that, "catching up" can become a major undertaking.
 
Over large cups of tea, and wonderfully anonymous in a sea of tourists, we "caught up" for hours--about former co-workers each of us had seen, over the state of the industry (both the one that we shared and the rest of what's out there), and about how our own lives have gone on since we worked together and since we last had coffee. I emerged, two hours later, not only with new perspective on my own life, but with renewed thoughts of people I'd seen daily for years, but not at all in the past few years. Perhaps my day-to-day race was still very much in progress, but I suddenly felt "caught up" in a million ways.
 
We spend a lot of time each day racing to feel caught up. Sometimes, it takes not just running faster, but a little looking back, and a little looking around, and even a little stopping for coffee in order to feel really "caught up." We can choose to run as fast as we like, but catching up in other ways can sometimes be the smartest step we take in our daily race.