One of the most interesting parts of my high school reunion (I just returned from my five-year reunion at a New England boarding school) was asking people why they had come. For many, it was a long and expensive journey, but without exception, my classmates minimized the inconvenience. ”I was in the neighborhood” was a common refrain, though not a particularly plausible one when you hear it justifying a trip from Manhattan to Concord, New Hampshire. One of my classmates told me Concord was practically on the way from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and another went to great lengths to explain that she hadn’t come up from Argentina to go to the reunion, but to a wedding in California.

For some reason, it is unacceptable to tell your high school classmates that you actually spent a considerable amount of money and time to see them. This struck me as odd. Isn’t this the whole purpose of coming to a high school reunion? Doesn’t our presence itself indicate that we took the time and trouble to come? These questions raised a more basic question: why did we come at all?

Certainly the commonly given answers to this question don’t satisfy. Many of my classmates claimed to want to catch up with those they haven’t seen since graduation; I argue that this is an unpleasant process that facebook was created to eliminate. It is nice to see close friends who have slipped out of touch, but the vast majority of these catching up friendships are not between friends, but between near-strangers who have the added awkwardness of pretending they know each other well.

I did catch up with some friends whom I hadn’t seen since graduation; this was pleasant, and I was glad to have the opportunity. However, in almost every one of these conversations it struck me how easy it would be to see this close friend again. At least among my rootless and highly mobile friends, it’s much easier and cheaper to call up a close friend when you’re in the same city. These one-on-one relationships are, unsurprisingly, best maintained one-on-one.

These questions rumbled around in the back of my mind on the first and second days of my reunion. I saw old friends, drank and danced and swam with my classmates, overcame some of the petty social divisions of high school, and had, in spite of all of the catching up, a fairly fun and relaxing time. With my return to campus, however, the emotional intensity of high school returned as well, and as I lay in on my inflatable mattress in the Days Inn, I felt a vague but powerful loneliness – a longing for a deeper and more fulfilling connection with some of my oldest friends.

This is not a particularly unusual feeling for me, and I imagine most of my classmates. It is also, I think, is the largest reason my classmates return to high school reunions.

A certain degree of isolation seems inherent to the kind of life that we live. My classmates and I are young, relatively wealthy, well educated and, most of all, highly mobile. I, for example, have spent the last ten years moving between three schools and three summer jobs all over the country and even South Africa. I have a girlfriend, a loving family, and close friends, but they are scattered, and as the world becomes smaller, I imagine they’ll only become more broadly dispersed. Nor am I an extreme example: my friends were born in many countries; they live all over the world, and almost everyone seems to be moving somewhere.

It’s not hard to maintain one-on-one relationships in this sort of environment. Everyone eventually lives in the same city, at least for a time. It is, however, very difficult to maintain group relationships, which are an entirely different (and I would argue) equally powerful entity.

Imagine, for a moment, your best group of friends. For many of your, these were high school friends, and if you were as blessed as I was, they were wonderful. You sought out their presence; you felt comfortable in their company; you may not have had strong individual relationships with each member of the group, but together, you felt as though you had a place and role uniquely your own. You felt accepted, loved, and (if you’re like me), you were as happy as you have ever been. In a word, you had a place.

I don’t think this idiom is a coincidence – having a place among a truly high-functioning group of friends is dependent on a real, physical place. High school reunions offer that location. To our placeless loneliness, reunions offer native soil and old friendships; they offer, if only for a weekend, roots to connect us to the land and each other.

This is a powerful motivator. Belonging to a group is one of the human beings’ fundamental emotional needs, and one doesn’t need to be a sociologist or an evolutionary biologist to explain why. Birds need to fly; humans need to be in loving groups.

I went to sleep unfulfilled, but at breakfast the next day with many of my closest friends, I found what I was looking for. Sitting at an immense communal table, we laughed and chatted comfortably. Two days of time together had reminded us how this group love thing works; we’d been reacquainted, and we felt like ourselves again. I felt like I had a place, and I felt the joy of belonging just as I had in high school. It wasn’t perfect, of course, and too many people were missing, but it felt right.

The feeling lasted for quite a while, but I know its half-life is finite. I wonder if our group unity can be recreated at our 10 year; I wonder if we’ll ever recreate that feeling again. I think it’s probable we’ll have smaller-scale moments like that at random meetings in New England or New York, but I have real doubts that my friends will ever be as together as we were in high school. That sounds trite, but I believe it’s a real tragedy – my friendships from high school (I suspect) will always have a special degree of emotional intensity if only by virtue of when in our lives we became friends. To suggest that such a group will live only in memory is one of the saddest thoughts I have.

Of course, I might be wrong. Maybe a few friends will settle near each other; perhaps we’ll discover a place to that we can share. Perhaps as time goes on, I’ll fulfill that group-love need with family or newer friends, or grow out of it altogether. We’ll see, I guess, but in the meantime, let’s not disguise our desire to be with each other. I want to see my friends, and I’ll go much further than Concord to do so.