Are there elements of your earlier life of which you are thoroughly ashamed? Well, if you’ve led any sort of life at all, of course there are. They may be crimes, grievous sins, or picaresque bits of misbehavior that you don’t really want your kids or (if still living) parents to find out about. Just makes life simpler and allows your personal mythology to endure.
Oh, don’t worry. This is not going to be one of those breast-beating, bare your soul about your past transgressions kind of thing a la Jimmy Swaggart – “Ah have si-yunned!!” No, it’s more about how we go down through all our years and look at the world through the eyes of that time, having not yet gained the experiences that make us what we are today.
Does that make sense? It kind of does to me.
OK, so I found this old photo. I cannot remember when it was taken. Probably the early 1980s, maybe around the time I returned from England after our year there. Excuse the rakish angle on the page, by the way. I guess it was a little askew when I scanned it. There are three of us pictured. I do remember we were drinking beer and we were (obviously per the photo) smoking cigarettes. We did a lot that sort of thing back then. We were young. We had the whole world of life ahead.
Anyway, I won’t tell you who the other two are other than to say they were newspaper colleagues and a couple of very talented people who could write circles around a lot of practicing scribes today. In my recall it was moving day for the woman in the photo. She was going to another apartment across town. Easy process it was. She didn’t have a lot of stuff and there was a box of beer at each end.
We’re looking very somber in the photo, though we weren’t terribly somber people. In truth, if memory serves, we were all slightly hungover from something or other the previous evening. Damned if I can remember what it was, though.
But, unearthing the photo put me in mind of a few things. The first one was, I thought my life was fairly settled by that point: I had a decent job and was doing well; had a lovely waterfront home; a nice wife; a great dog and it seemed my pattern for the future years was settled.
Ha! Or, if you prefer HA! I, of course, had no idea how the universe was going to unfold, and as I look back on my earlier ‘me’ I cannot help but feel a certain poignant sadness that is more than mere nostalgia.
A friend once said that if a young child was ever to be cruelly told what adult life was genuinely like that child would kill him or herself. I understand that.
Yet, I am happy I didn’t. From the date of that photo there would be horrors to come. There would also be some blisses that would have been unimaginable at the time. So, it has balanced out in a way.
And I also believe I am just a slightly better person than I was then.
Though I could be wrong.
All I can say, kids, is whether your life is shitty at the moment or exquisite, it will change You can count on that.
And I still think so 