Today I read with interest an article by Tom Gauld in the NY Times Magazine about tattoos that have outlived their usefulness. It’s called The Existential Anguish of the Tattoo, and it’s a great read.
That article, plus my recent experience wandering through my old undergrad stomping grounds, got me thinking about this strange relationship we have with our younger selves. That person is us, more than anyone else could ever claim to be, and yet at the same time that person is not us.
I know other people think about this as well. Last weekend when I mentioned to an old friend that I had gone back to see my college campus, my friend said “Now you are one of those mysterious older people who sometimes shows up on campus, looking slightly lost.” And it was true.
But I wonder, what if we could actually sit down in a room and meet our younger self face to face (or, conversely, our older self). Suppose you were given an opportunity to do just that, through some unknown technology (all things being possible in science fiction and politics).
Would you say yes? Would you see it as an opportunity? Or would you find the idea of such a meeting too disturbing?
It would be creepy and probably embarrassing (strangely) but hard to resist! I wonder if I would like younger myself more or less in actuality compared to memory. And would my younger self make different choices if she knew where some of them led to for the older self? Would I choose not to learn some of the things I’ve learned or feel some of what I’ve felt (good and bad)? Perhaps it is just as well that we don’t have to answer this.
I suppose that we get somewhat near this by reading an old journal if we were so inclined to write. I rarely used to journal but I did at some significant points in my life. Recently I happened across an old journal that I hadn’t read in many years. It was somewhat sobering to see how little my thought processes had changed in some respects (and also somewhat comforting).