I was visiting a friend last night, and in the process of downing two bottles of red wine and watching the movie Lesbian Vampire Killers (I shit you not) we started reflecting on what life was like back in high school. We’ve had this conversation so many times before, and yet, each time we do it seems like I somehow manage to find more and more insight into how I perceive those years. It’s become abundantly clear that my perception of myself from back then is a lot different from reality. My friend keeps reminding me that when I look back on those years I really have to look at it more objectively. I know it’s a totally human thing to do, but any analysis I do on that time is far too tainted by my emotions and memories of various hurts.
I really need to work on separating myself and figuring out what my motives for what I was doing, or what I was feeling were back then. For that matter, from a distance I should be looking at what motives other people had to treat me positively or negatively. There really does seem to be a difference in how I remember things and how they probably really were. I wonder why that’s the case. Perhaps I’m trying to mentally rewrite history just to explain why I am who I am. No clue…
Possibly related posts:
2 comments
thethoughtherder says:
Sun. May 30, 2010 at 11:24 am (UTC -5 )
I’ll sometimes view what I’m doing with the question”What would 8/14/18 year old you think?’, its a bit daft as its the perception of the younger me (kinda like you are saying) from the age I am now but I think that it just enables me to look at some thing form a slightly different angle.
Bottom line, the process enables me to justify dumb stuff to myself…..
Jay says:
Sun. June 6, 2010 at 9:50 pm (UTC -5 )
In the end, we need to justify the dumb stuff to allow ourselves to feel like we’re not really horribly incompetent to face the real world, right?