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Careful what you wish for. It might just melt your brain. I speak from experience, naturally.

For I spent the first half of 2021 desperately trying to find people I had known in the distant past, hoping to make amends with them, and the second half lamenting that I had been well and truly forgotten in the mists of time.

So pervasive those thoughts that I found myself writing through the winter a tale of reunions. A fictional exploration which turned all of my previous understanding of events on their head. By the early months of 2022, a new yearning stirred within.

“If I had the opportunity today,” I wrote towards the end of February, “I would apologise to all who were troubled by my youthful gaze.” 

But, in truth, I never thought that opportunity would present. Indeed, the very next day, while wandering through a shopping centre in Harrow-on-the-Hill with my kids, suddenly overawed by the crowds, I found myself perturbed by these thoughts: “So many people walk the earth.”

Of course, my kids laughed at me when I blurted these sentiments out aloud, sniggering to one another: “Dad’s having another of his meltdowns.”

They couldn’t possibly have known of the regrets that harangued me, which had made the mission to make amends seem so urgent. None of this new; years ago I had longed to bump into those folk in the streets of my old home town, even if only once.

But now, witness to those crowds in London, it suddenly hit me with all of its merciless force: there was no way in the world our paths could ever possibly cross again. I was lost in a sea of humanity, cut adrift. Here in a city of nine million people, in a country of 67 million, amongst 8 billion living souls.

Ten days after that, I would be sitting on a train carrying me into Central London for the first time in years, those thoughts reinforced by the sight of the cityscape zipping past. “How preposterous to think you will ever reacquaint yourself with those you once knew,” I chided myself, conceding that this desire to make amends was futile.

But, as I say, be careful what you wish for. For a day later, the one on my mind slid into view from out of nowhere. If just twenty hours earlier I had accepted that ever apologising was now impossible, what I’d discover moments later would simply melt my brain.

The last time I had ever laid eyes on them, over a quarter of a century earlier, we were both living up north, and I had imagined that’s where they remained. But no. It turned out that twenty-one years earlier, I had been introduced to my wife precisely two hundred metres from their front door, two hundred miles south, a single street between us.

Perhaps we could say that my inability to comprehend this is simply another of those limitations of my brain. Maybe I do simply misunderstand the nature of probability. Perhaps there is nothing to see here: that this is mere chance alone. Is it so surprising that two graduates should settle in the same neighbourhood of their capital city in pursuit of work?

Perhaps so, but every time I think of it, I’m struck dumb. Yes, even now, nearly two years later. Indeed it mostly hits me when I’m walking out and about in public amidst great crowds. To my mind, it’s simply too unlikely to comprehend. Indeed, it has completely blown my mind.

But there we are. Just two weeks earlier, I had said that I would apologise if I had the opportunity today, and all of a sudden that opportunity presented itself. Out of the blue, in the most unexpected way. It was as if my Lord was saying to me, “So apologise then, if you’re truthful.”

Making the resolve and actually doing so are two different things, however. In the end, it took me another year to muster the courage to reach out to them. As it happened, they were extremely magnanimous in their response, but really I feel that my own words barely captured the half of it.

Apologising for all that happened in their presence was relatively easy; for all that happened in their absence, much harder. The opinions held. The words written. The bitter contempt and rancour for those dearest to them. It took me years to realise that I had not been wronged, but that I myself had wronged others.

How to say any of that? First there’s finding the courage to speak every ounce of truth. To admit to all that the inner agitation reveals. To truly hold myself to account; to break every inner idol. To vanquish this ego. To admit that I was in the wrong, or that I misunderstood nearly everything. Only then will I truly make amends, and perhaps then put things right.