I was writing on Facebook about how strange it seems to me that my experience there has put me back into touch with friends I haven't seen for 20 or 30 years or even longer.

One of those friends responded to my comment by saying how much happier she was now, approaching age 50, than she was when she was 20. I had thought she was a pretty special person back then, but it didn't surprise me that she wasn't happy. If there's one thing I have learned in the last few years working on a book about my high school classmates, it's that life was a lot more complex even for the kids who seemed like they had everything going for them.

One girl I interviewed who had seemed to me like an absolute goddess told me that all through high school she had felt like she was stupid and ugly. It turned out she was dyslexic, a problem that wasn't as well understood in the mid '60s.

[caption id="attachment_686" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Forty years later"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/classpic.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-686" title="classpic" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/classpic-300x130.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="130" /></a>[/caption]

As for my friend from 1980, she was both beautiful and bright, but for whatever reason, she hadn't really found herself.

Heck, does anybody really find themself at that age?

I knew two 18-year-olds who seemed really happy, and both of them breezed through college in four years with honors, got great jobs and got happily married by their mid 20s.

To be fair, though, I'm assuming a lot when I think my two kids didn't suffer through some of the same angst.

There is no question that age and experience teaches us that not everything we thought was crucially important really mattered as much as we thought. I know there was advice my mother gave me that I didn't heed that turned out to be absolutely correct.

Unfortunately, most of life's lessons seem to be ones we have to learn for ourself.

I'm glad Facebook has shown me one thing.

Most of my friends, most of the folks who really mattered to me at one time or another, seem to have fairly happy lives.