Brad Rateike: Let nostalgia prompt you to reach out to a friend

I had lunch recently with a longtime friend I had not seen in several years. We had been professional colleagues and neighbors in our younger days and had even attended each other’s weddings. We met shortly after college and watched each other “grow up” as adults over 15 years, even if from afar.

Our conversation that day was delightful and hilarious, picking up like we had seen each other the previous week. We discussed our jobs, families and substandard golf games and revisited stories that no current or future employer should hear about. It was truly great to reconnect with my friend, but my feelings of joy turned quickly into guilt as I started to feel bad for having allowed so much time to pass.

Nostalgia and association are real, never more so than during the holidays.

A few days after my lunch, I arrived home one evening and ate a few goldfish—Goldfish crackers—before dinner. Goldfish crackers are, ironically enough, a snack I associate with the hospitality of that same friend and his wife from their holiday gatherings, despite the gatherings’ discontinuation (for understandable reasons) since those friends started having kids. I briefly reminisced about those days, smiled, and moved on with my life. What I should have done is send my friends a message to let them know I was thinking about them.

Some might call it an illness, but I generally enjoy meeting and getting to know new people. It has been suggested that one version of happiness to me is a room full of strangers. Perhaps. That said, I espouse the belief that relationships matter, and I especially appreciate the chance to form new bonds with people I was not expecting to get to know.

A casual observer might characterize this as “networking,” but I think that term cheapens the whole activity and makes it seem as if anyone taking an interest in someone else is akin to the guy collecting business cards at the monthly chamber of commerce lunch, trying to sell financial services. There might not be anything wrong with that behavior, but I do not view it in the same light as sincerely cultivating and nurturing organic relationships.

At a time when a pandemic has limited the amount of time we have been able to spend with one another for nearly two years now, including the cancellation of many events we are used to attending, we have all had to find new ways of communicating, even if they are less intimate than we prefer.

Those challenges, however, have not changed the fact that even the most introverted and isolated among us appreciate knowing that someone is thinking of us. I cannot imagine that even the “get off my lawn” colleague/client we all know would be offended by receiving a message saying, “Just drove past (insert location) and thought of you. I hope you are having a good week.” In fact, it might just make their day.

We are all guilty of not letting one another know how much we care as often as we should. Attaining perfection in that area is impossible, but it is worthy of the pursuit. My hope is that, over the remaining weeks of this holiday season and going into 2022, I use organic prompts of nostalgia to remind me to send those messages, make those phone calls and nurture those relationships.

That might not be exactly how I would like to do it, and it could become a lot of work, but anything worth doing is, especially when it comes to relationships.•

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Rateike is founder and owner of BAR Communications and served as director of cabinet communications for President Donald Trump.

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