Youth is fleeting, but youthfulness lasts a lifetime.

I reached out to people from a company I used to work for and held a small alumni gathering last Saturday.

The people who gathered this time were those I met at the advertising agency where I worked for about five years starting in my late 20s: two former bosses, one colleague, two juniors, and myself, making six of us in total.
There is a saying that ten years is an era, and in those terms, these are people I was involved with more than three eras ago.

Colleagues and bosses from three eras—that is, over 30 years ago—responded to my invitation.
(By the way, I, yamepin, who am writing this, will turn 66 when my birthday comes in May.)

The sales department of that advertising agency had many young, spirited employees, and many of them enjoyed their after-five hours in a flashy way.
In contrast, the creative department, where designers and writers belonged, considered all-nighters the norm. It was a city that never slept, where securing sleep was more urgent than enriching one's private life, and the lights never went out.
Even though we were in the same company, the types of people there and their approaches to work were completely different worlds. There were many parts that were incompatible.

And for some reason, this company had a tendency to attract super-eccentric people.
In particular, several quirky individuals would periodically engage in quirky behavior, so accidents were an everyday occurrence. We never ran out of topics like gossip stemming from tangled human relationships.

It was not uncommon for sparks to fly between the sales team and the designers over the content and schedules of the work brought in. Perhaps not because of that, but later the creative department became independent and started a new company, and I became one of its members.

It was a company like a crucible, where those who couldn't maintain their sense of self would be melted away without a trace. The former sales manager and the former president of the design company that spun off from there were now sitting around a table at a stylish restaurant after more than 30 years.
It is deeply moving that a day would come when we could reminisce about those days, which felt like a survival game, while smiling at each other like this.

Both in their tone of voice and their perspectives, everyone remained the same character as they were back then. It seems that even as we age, our essential parts do not change much.
Perhaps because all six of us are still actively working or have missions to fulfill, the sentiment "you haven't changed at all" was exchanged repeatedly.

We were definitely the oldest group at that restaurant, but our sensibilities were young.
That made me happy.