Fifty years is a long time. When I graduated from a suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, high school 50 years ago, I certainly wasn’t thinking about what life would be like a half century in the future.

Allow me to share some thoughts.

During the past 50 years I’ve had very little—actually almost no—contact with my fellow classmates. After collecting my diploma back then, I went on to college in California and then the United Kingdom. I found that even with once-best friends, the relationships faded. All of us went our separate ways and developed new associations and careers.

I hardly thought of my high school class, but then came the invitation for the 50th class reunion. The invitation spawned many questions: Should I go? Who would be there? Would I know anyone and would they know me? What would be the point of re-connecting with people from 50 years ago when I lived a much different life from today?

When we practice principles of sharing and concern for others, it produces great outcomes.

I decided to go, mostly out of curiosity.

Then the reunion day came. I’m sure everyone was conscious of how we looked, but then I had to laugh. One nice feature of the evening was that we didn’t have to guess anyone’s age.

As I walked into the country club where we held the affair, I quickly recognized faces and personalities. I was glad I came. I was very happy to see my classmates and I felt the reverse was true. While we don’t have much to do with one another now, we did share a very common history in our upbringing. Old forgotten relationships came back alive and we promptly shared many stories of how we affected one another back then.

Of the 1965 class of 365 graduates, 130 showed up at the reunion. Although many remained locally in Minnesota, others came from all over the United States, with one coming all the way from New Zealand. We were sobered to find that about 40, more than 10 percent of the class, were deceased. In our youth, we had thought we were invulnerable. The absence of old friends once vibrant made us all reflect and think.

Quickly we recounted stories about school events and teachers. We talked about the parties at each other homes, which were almost always chaperoned and supervised by our parents. There were no Facebook or cell phones, yet we had our own distinct communication lines.

We recounted how we grew in a time before the 1969 Woodstock music festival, the 1968 Bobbie Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations and the free love movement that transformed 20th century morals. It was a different era of time that we shared. We may feel ancient, but we were contemporaries with learned and shared values that included higher standards of morality and conduct than what is generally embraced by some today. Lifestyles that were once spoken about in hushed tones are now proudly paraded. Monumental changes have occurred in our lifetime.

A common comment struck me. Several remarked that we had “grown up and matured.” In the time warp of 50 years since high school we had all acquired a profession, married and raised children. At the same time some met with harsh trials, divorce and setbacks. Almost all our parents are deceased. One interesting observation was the difference between the 25th and 50th class reunions. During the 25th many were reaching the peak of their careers and achieving great things. Back then they wanted to talk about that. Now the emphasis turned on genuine interest toward our cohorts and how they had fared over the years. Twenty five years ago we compared. Now we shared. All were much more interested in listening and catching up in a much more mellow manner. More than not, those I talked to had retired and loved it.

One important takeaway: Humans are not intended to be loners. We are created to have meaningful relationships. Those relationships span the entire human experience—parent, child, husband, wife, boss, public servant, on and on. When you discover the principles that make for successful relationships, you are then beginning to understand life’s purpose as it translates to getting along with one another and God. When we practice principles of sharing and concern for others, it produces great outcomes. When those same principles are violated, they bring on failure and heartache.

The work of the United Church of God is geared heavily to relationship building. If you search our website for “relationships,” you will find almost 4,500 references about almost any conceivable type of relationship you can think of. Because it’s important, we love to write and discuss about relationships and how they can be better.

One passage that comes to mind about life and its meaning is Psalm 90:12: “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

No one is invulnerable. Wherever you are, whatever your age, learn to be wise and gain maturity from what life delivers to you.