Subjects in Rearview

We are all in constant conversation with the past. More specifically, with our past selves.

We tell the old us what we think of their unrealistic ambitions and their utter lack of preparation whenever we find ourselves shouldering a difficult task for which we feel unprepared.

We curse their lack of will and foresight when we labor in the gym to correct the damage they have done to us with their poor diet and lack of exercise.

We denigrate their naivety when we look around at the shambles of the world they made; the world we have to live in.

We envy them when we think about how vast their future was compared to how small ours feels now with every possibility being foreclosed with each passing year. I will never be a soldier, a spy, a carpenter, a writer, a fighter, a drifter, a detective, a professor, a fisherman, a movie critic or any of the other careers I once considered but to the me in the past, gazing into his beer and thinking through the possibilities before him each of those exists as a potential path to the future. And so I am jealous at the potentiality of my past self.

But I like to think that we are also kind to the younger versions of ourselves when we have conversations with them in our heads. We have to be. Life is a process and our vantage point in the present would not be possible without the work and toil that they go through and that lies ahead of them still, though we have the luxury of reaping the benefits. At least, that's how I try to think of it as I look back through the years and see myself sitting on that barstool. Thinner and stronger, more idealistic but less sure of himself.

I can't help but take pity on the poor bastard.