When we meet somebody who studied at the same university or college that we graduated from, we immediately identify with them. There is an unsaid fraternity that exists. The ice is broken automatically, and we find ourselves interested in bonding with them. This is the feeling of being part of an alumni. It is not related to an alumni network – just the knowing that two people spent some part of their life studying or working at that same place is sufficient to induce this feeling of connectedness. I’m writing this article to offer a radically different perspective on it.

At it’s very core, the concept of being an alumni is basically this: sharing some part of space – usually a university or a workplace – at the same or different points in time. Even if people are separated by years, they are still alumni if they have spent a part of their life in the same place. This is why alumni networks exist – to remind these people that they are bonded by that particular college or firm. When I say that I am part of the alumni of Deloitte, I know that I will be so even a decade down the line. Time becomes a variable but irrelevant factor in this equation. Space is constant.

It is easy for us to see it because we can move freely in the 3 dimensional space. If we are willing to stretch our thinking a little, and flip the axis of our outlook, what we look at is the concept of alumni with time as a constant and space as a variable factor. We are all alumni of this moment in time.

In the traditional sense of the word, as alumni, we are all separated by time but united by space. But this is a very divisive and limiting view of our oneness. In a nutshell, this is what I am suggesting:

We are all divided by space but united by time.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a good illustration of this phenomenon. We are at different parts of the world, but we all have graduated or are graduating from the experience of the pandemic. It offers a powerful reminder that we are bound together by time – all of us. We are all prisoners of time. We are all part of this fraternity.

To me, this evokes a deep sense of connectedness to every other human on this planet. But this is not limited only to the pandemic. This phenomenon is in play all the time. We just do not notice and appreciate it because we live in time. We do not see time the way it is. We live inside a psychological construct of time. However, time as a human construct is useful only as a variable in the location co-ordinates. We cannot meet someone at a point in space without specifying a point in time.

Psychological time is useful as a tool, but we often forget that it is a tool, and this is why it is difficult for us to feel this deep sense of connection to everything and everyone around us at any point. Once we see through this illusion, what we have is one large community of alumni members who support each other as they travel through time in their lives.