A Short Contemplation Regarding 'Batch Unity'

Tonight while I was wrapping up my thoughts for the day while playing a video game, my often dysfunctional memory data bank decided to plant itself on the old subject of 'batch unity' (which by the way I would still insist on calling 'class unity' *ahem*).

It has been often been said by most, including even by those from my own high school class, that this was our 'curse', this lack of batch unity, and it truly sucked way back then. I could still vividly remember how it was that while all the other classes are pretty much closely tightly knit together, you could always tell that my class was pretty much the odd bunch. Of course, like everyone else, we had our own set of cliques but we just don't have that one giant clique known as - the BATCH.

It's not as if we didn't try. We really did. But it really took effort to do so. Although I would like to think (and I really do think) that by our fourth year, we eventually nailed this 'batch unity' thing down and our graduation ceremony turned out to be quite a memorable event despite lingering issues and disputes between some people.

Ten years later and looking back on those days, I asked myself: Were we really that bad? Were most people from my class really just that self-centered? Was it really just a 'curse' we had to learn to accept?

While I wouldn't deny that our social mindset was indeed very much different from the rest of the school, I'd have to say that this 'lack' is not really a curse, no matter what the naysayers might say. Looking at things another way, one could perhaps attribute my class' unique group personality to us just basically having more people who have PRAGMATIC points of view as compared to the ROMANTIC way of thinking of other people in the school.

And so it was that I came to realize that perhaps things weren't so bad after all. The year my class graduated wasn't just the turn of the century, it was the end of a millennium. And maybe, just maybe, my classmates and I just have a mindset that belongs to a new age, a PRAGMATIC age, as opposed to the romantic minds of old.

And looking at how our lives have turned out so far, it is quite impressive seeing how most, if not all of us, managed to adapt ourselves to the ever-changing times. Is our pragmatism to be given credit? Most likely. If we were born romantics, would our lives turn out to be different? It would probably be similar, but it definitely wouldn't be the same.

Being a romantic myself, I've come to a closer understanding of how these guys (with whom I've shared no less than four wonderful years of my life with) really think and tick. It is good to finally get to know them even if it took me ten long years to do so. Yes, I think I have grown to love them more.

Photo by Leslee Natividad