Ever thought about: How do you find some thing (or some one), if you can’t “Google it”?

Today’s search for a person I was trying to find yielded the following response:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 3 already displayed.

Three results. Just three. And sometimes, that’s a good day for me! Let me explain…

I completed my schooling in 1990, and graduation in 1995. This was a time when there was no What’sApp, hardly any of us could afford mobile phones, and the Internet was yet to become a thing. That’s when we separated from most of the people that mattered to us in Life – good friends, great teachers, familiar neighbors, etc.

Many of us began our own journeys, leaving the town or country we were born (or grew up) in, as we tried to figure out our unique path to “success”, whatever that may be. This was a time without cellphone numbers, email ids or any other mode of communication we now take for granted. In some cases, not even a clear memory of their last names.

No wonder, when years (or worse, decades) later, when someone my age tries to look up some of these folks, we struggle, especially if they had a common name, or chose not to build some Social Media presence for themselves in time. That struggle is real. And, for all the power of the Internet at our fingertips, there are days when the search page reports zero results.

There are also days you get lucky. Like yesterday, when I had lunch at the home of a kind, old Parsi bawa who was the Head of Department during my graduation. Back in the day, I was just a young student, even afraid to look him in the eye. He had a formidable reputation in his field, and was not very approachable (at least to some of us). Fortunately, I was able to find him after 29 years, through another classmate I only reconnected with recently! And, it was one of the most enjoyable afternoons I’ve had in a long time.

The need to connect with people that once meant something to you is in-built within each of us. Sometimes, it maybe just to relive an old memory, while other times you want to reach out and thank a teacher for all that they taught you in Life.

If you’re young and reading this, you may not identify with much of it – after all, we live in an interconnected, always-on world. Your search results may not always throw-up a blank, but Life has a way of doing what it does: Plans evolve. Friends disperse. Connections get weaker. And eventually, we lose touch with what once mattered most to us.

So, my advice – Stay connected with your tribe. Life is a contact sport.