Happy Birthday, Past Me

2022-11-04 · personal

Happy Birthday, past me, from the alone future you. And I think during that, will I like my future self?

Will we share the same dreams, and would either of us want to? Will he dread the very idea of my present aspirations, or will he simply laugh at them? And which one is worse?

It's an infuriating thought to be mocked by this much older and likely far more cynical self.

What does he know more than me? At least, I would hope.

Then again, I think back to my younger self, a happy-go-lucky boy skipping along the shores of life, unable and unwilling to fathom the deep dark waters that surround him. Surely he knew less than I, in an empirical sense.

He would, of course, struggle to do the laundry or make an omelet, and yet he seems far wiser than my beaten-down present self. A good day is one spent in the yard searching for dinosaurs, not three coffees, two meetings, and four joyful hours of watching other people's lives. Dreams of sailing the exploring a galactic empire sound more appealing than imagining what I'll do with that next paycheck.

Of course, the details of my thoughts at such an age aren't entirely respectable, but this archaic worldview grounded in the significance of the present moment is something that I have regrettably lost or, at the very least, misplaced. Then again, this is a rosy picture of my former self; my memory expertly filters out the temper tantrums, the painful introversion, and the desperate yearning to be an adult and command respect.

Do I really remember what it was like? There appear to be nothing more than blurred instances of singular events.

I have come to realize that this memory of a younger self is less of a character profile and more so an inaccurate and systematically biased portrayal of all that I wish was still true of my present self. And what does that make of me? If all we have to tie these different selves into one coherent identity, that is our memory, and our memories can only betray us.

Then how much of us truly exist? How much of me will I remember? Will this overly confident and self-obsessed 20-year-old that is speaking right now become nothing more than a template for my much older self to falsely remember and celebrate and even wish to revive?! Will the real me cease to exist and become a symbol for an age of idealism, romanticism, and joyful self-expression?

So, I am not sure if my future self likes me or not, but what I am sure of is that I resent him and simultaneously accept him in our camaraderie. For him, and I, and the young boy looking for empires, despite our differences, all share this amateurish attempt to craft some sort of story with vastly different characters, this story that is my life.

So, Happy Birthday, future self, past self, from a very lonely you.