In the early 1840’s, in Concord Massachusetts, a friendship was budding between Henry David Thoreau and Lidian Emerson. (Yes, the wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was complicated).

“It was a pleasure even to go away from you…such a departure is a sort of further introduction and meeting,” Thoreau told Lidian in a letter, in May of 1843. “Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.” ¹

It’s quite the turn of phrase, even for a 19th-century poet-philosopher. Thoreau was apparently not troubled by the idea of being apart from his friend; if anything, he relished it as an opportunity to feel all the more excited the next time he saw Lidian.

In our day and age, we sadly have started to lose the art of long-distance friendships; when our friends are at a distance, instead of using the period of separation to strengthen our friendships through intentional correspondence, we tend to fall out of contact altogether.

Good friends – old friends – are not easy to come by. Loneliness and isolation have become a crisis in our society to the point that the US General Surgeon issued a warning and heartfelt plea on the matter. According to his report, 1 in 2 adult Americans reported feeling lonely, and this was before the start of the pandemic. ²

An obvious solution is to reach out to those we know, even if it’s been a few months or years (or decades). But what’s obvious to one part of our brains does not make acting on it any easier. To learn how to reconnect with old friends, it helps to understand why we struggle to do it in the first place.

Flawed Brains: We See Old Friends as Strangers

A series of studies on individuals in Canada, the UK, and the US revealed that people are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends. ³

By “surprisingly” the authors mean that even when participants wanted to reconnect with an old friend, were given time to write a short note to said friend, and were reassured that the friend would be receptive to hearing from them, they still failed to take action.

This is the sort of incongruous behavior that drove many of the ancient Greek philosophers bonkers since they viewed humans as “rational” compared to other animals. We’ve discovered in the many centuries since that humans are not nearly as rational as we thought (although it’s sort of a wondrous catch-22 that we are also self-aware enough to realize this). The first step to change our self-defeating behavior is to recognize it.

The authors of these studies made a clever discovery that helped to influence the participants’ behavior. They drew an analogy between “old friends” and “strangers”; even though there is clearly a difference (and it’s generally easier to rekindle old friendships than it is to build new ones), it seems that in most people’s limbic brains, they are the same thing. This perhaps explains why the study participants felt anxious and embarrassed about reaching out to someone they hadn’t talked to in a while.

To test this hypothesis, the authors had the participants practice striking up conversations with strangers; sure enough, after doing this it became easier for the participants to reach out to the old friends they’d been so nervous about contacting.

I think the most important thing here is not the fact the participants talked to strangers per se, but that they took a step outside their comfort zones and had a validating experience. Each of us can do this in different ways.

Your Old Friends Will Be Glad You Reached Out

Because we humans struggle so much to internalize what things will bring us true and lasting joy over our lifetimes, we are vulnerable to regret. Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse, listed the now-famous top five regrets she heard mentioned from the hundreds of dying patients she cared for. Number Four was, “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

I can’t help but find this scenario both incredibly depressing and totally avoidable: an individual, either too passive or anxious to reach out to an old friend, continues to autopilot through life until she runs out of time. Only then, while stuck on her deathbed (at home, if she’s lucky) is she forced to think about the consequence of her choice. Meanwhile, the old friend she regrets not reaching out to is experiencing the same remorse on his deathbed, wherever he happens to be.

Reconnecting with old friends is not (always) easy. I sympathize with the nerves and doubts that go along with it, but we owe ourselves so much more. If there’s one thing experience has taught me, it’s that your old friends will never be upset that you reached out. They will be just as happy you did as you will be, maybe even more so.

Old friends are a mirror to our past selves just as we are to theirs.

You may wonder, “Isn’t there a point at which it is too late to reconnect with old friends? Where the awkwardness would outweigh the benefit?”

Unless the friendship was a weak one to begin with (or if there was too much pain involved, a wholly separate dilemma), I can’t think how this could ever be the case. Our memories are like steel traps in that past experiences, feelings, and ideas come flooding back to us when we’re with an old friend who shares those memories. Old friends are a mirror to our past selves just as we are to theirs.

How long is “long”, anyway, when it comes to the span of our puny human lifetimes? Our shared memories remain whether one year, ten, or twenty have passed.

If despite all this you fear it may be too late to reconnect with an old friend or you worry you will fall out of touch with friends you have now, take heart from these beautiful words from aviator and author Richard Bach:

“Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.” ⁴

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Read Next: How to Make Old Friends →

1. Thoreau, Henry David. Letters to Various Persons. Edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ticknor and Fields, 1865. University of California Libraries, Contributor. Read the archived version here.
2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. Read here.
3. Aknin, L. B., & Sandstrom, G. M. (2024). People are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends. Communications Psychology, 23. Read here.
4. Bach, R. (1989). Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. Dell.