Exclusive | Ruta Patel on the business case for staying connected

A few months ago, I met some of my college friends after years apart. Within minutes, we had stopped talking about our lives today and were laughing about the firsts we had shared together. The first time we lived away from home. The first all night conversations before exams. The first interviews that felt life changing. The first heartbreaks that seemed impossible to recover from. We were becoming adults together without even realising it, and somewhere between those conversations we had quietly become part of each other’s stories.

Driving home that evening, I found myself wondering why these reunions feel so different from meeting someone new. Time had changed all of us. Careers had unfolded, families had grown and life had taken unexpected turns. Yet sitting together felt strangely familiar, as though someone had simply pressed pause all those years ago. It made me wonder why certain people find their way back into our lives while so many others remain part of our past. Behavioural science offers some fascinating clues.

Looking for the people who remember an earlier version of you

There is something reassuring about spending time with people who knew you before the job titles, responsibilities and routines. My college friends remember the version of me that was still trying to figure life out. They knew my dreams before I achieved some of them and before I quietly let go of others.

Behavioural science calls this Self Continuity. We all want to believe that our lives form one connected story. Reconnecting with people who witnessed our formative years helps bridge the distance between who we were and who we are today. They remind us that every version of ourselves still belongs to the same person.

Sometimes all it takes is one small reminder

It rarely starts with an elaborate plan to reconnect. More often, it begins with something completely ordinary. A familiar song. A photograph from college. A birthday reminder. A passing mention of an old professor. Before you realise it, you are searching for someone’s number or wondering where life took them.

This is the Availability Heuristic in action. Whatever comes easily to mind feels more important in that moment. The person has not suddenly become more meaningful. They have simply become easier to recall, and that small mental nudge is often enough to turn a passing thought into a conversation.

Time edits our memories

As the evening with my college friends went on, we remembered endless laughter and unforgettable moments. Only later did someone remind us of the disagreements, the misunderstandings and the reasons we had drifted apart. We had remembered the friendship long before we remembered its complications.

Behavioural science describes this as Rosy Retrospection. Our minds tend to soften difficult memories and preserve the happier ones. It is one of the reasons reconnecting feels so inviting. We are often returning not just to a person, but to a version of the past that has become gentler with time.

Some friendships never lose their familiarity

The thing that surprised me most was how quickly the conversation settled into its old rhythm. The jokes needed no explanation. The silences felt comfortable. We slipped into familiar roles without trying, despite the years that had passed.

The Mere Exposure Effect explains why this happens. Simply spending time with people over many shared experiences builds familiarity, and familiarity creates comfort. Time may interrupt those relationships, but it does not always erase the trust that was built through years of shared moments.

The hardest step is often the first message

There are still people I think about but have never contacted. Every now and then I wonder how they are doing, open my phone and then decide to do it another day. Somehow, another day never quite arrives.

This is Status Quo Bias at work. We naturally prefer leaving things exactly as they are, even when making a small change could lead to something meaningful. Sometimes the only difference between the people we remember and the people we find again is that one person chose to send the first message.

The older I get, the more I realise that reconnecting is not really about reliving the past. It is about recognising the people who helped shape us. Some remind us of our courage, others of our uncertainty, and many of the dreams we carried before life became busy. They give us a chance to see ourselves through a lens that no one else can offer.

Perhaps that is why the people we find again matter so much. They remind us that while time changes our circumstances, it does not always weaken the connections that mattered. Sometimes those relationships simply wait quietly in the background until life gives us a reason to find them again.

How might this show up at work?

The same pattern plays out in our professional lives. Former colleagues become clients, old managers become mentors and teammates from years ago unexpectedly return with new opportunities. Relationships built through shared experiences often restart with remarkable ease because trust was established long before the reunion.

For leaders, this is a reminder that careers are rarely made up of one time interactions. The people we work alongside today may become the people we find again years from now. What relationship from your professional life might be worth reconnecting with today?

Also read: Exclusive | Ruta Patel on why shared experiences build stronger teams than team-building activities