Today I found myself back at the dorms I lived in as an undergrad at Harvard. In all the intervening years I had never been back, so it was quite a singular experience.
The quad was nearly empty on this cold crisp winter’s day, but in my mind I could see all the people I had shared this space with, as though they had just stepped away, and would be back at any moment.
At first I wondered whether I was really different after all these years. “Was that me, or somebody else?” I found myself thinking. “And how would I know?”
But then something unexpected happened. As I wondered around the neighborhood, checking out houses and shops, I noticed a difference in myself. For example, I stopped in at the local grocery, and greeted the man behind the counter while I picked up a few things — and realized he was the same guy who’d been behind the counter when I was a student. Turns out he’s been running that place for forty years. We got into a nice conversation about the neighborhood.
I realized that in all the time I had lived at the dorm, I had never explored these places, just a few blocks away. I hadn’t learned the geography, hadn’t noticed where the stores were, hadn’t gotten to know the shopkeepers, hadn’t been curious at all about the world outside.
The teenage version of myself had not been an explorer of strange neighborhoods — quite the contrary. In all the time I was at school, I had learned next to nothing about the vibrant places just beyond the dorm.
For the person I am now, such a thing would be unthinkable.
So it seems that people do change, after all.