Posted on Facebook 8/18/2022
- Written by Stewart M. Green
The past is a memory, but, like the future, it’s also a dream. Events, scenes, chapters, and images from the past rise from the depths of the unconscious mind, surfacing like a spouting whale before submerging again in deep water.
As you get older and hopefully wiser from the passage and ravages of years, it’s a good exercise to look back to yesterday at your younger self. Self-reflection is not narcissism, but instead is a way to look at the journey from then to now, to wonder at the paths not taken, to remember loves lost and gained, to consider the contradictions of the paradise and ignorance of youth, and to look at the stories we tell ourselves and the world about who we are, how we got here, and the whys and wherefores of that long, strange trip.
We live and grow and individuate on a road of divergent choices, living in process, a way of being present and accepting the here and now as the most important time of our lives. When I look backward at my life and times, I’m ashamed of some of my choices and the paths I followed, but I can’t change that past, only accept my actions and their consequences, and continue forward through time and space.
As you get older and hopefully wiser from the passage and ravages of years, it’s a good exercise to look back to yesterday at your younger self. Self-reflection is not narcissism, but instead is a way to look at the journey from then to now, to wonder at the paths not taken, to remember loves lost and gained, to consider the contradictions of the paradise and ignorance of youth, and to look at the stories we tell ourselves and the world about who we are, how we got here, and the whys and wherefores of that long, strange trip.
We live and grow and individuate on a road of divergent choices, living in process, a way of being present and accepting the here and now as the most important time of our lives. When I look backward at my life and times, I’m ashamed of some of my choices and the paths I followed, but I can’t change that past, only accept my actions and their consequences, and continue forward through time and space.
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Some lessons I learned and embraced, while others I ignored, and then I continued to make unwise choices, although you never know what is wise or unwise at the time. You consider options, make choices, and then continue spinning into the future. It’s all part of being and growing, trusting the daily process of life, and not pushing the river too hard.
Looking at my younger self in this photograph from September 1979 helps me look at my life now and the choices and decisions that led me to this very point of moving time as well as my shifting, quicksilver life story. I look at myself in this photograph and see the same person, the same inner being, just the shell has changed. Now my hair is whiter and sparser; the beard and mustache are shaven; I still wear dress shirts and bandanas; the Chouinard stand-up climbing pants were consigned to the rubbish bin, full of holes and tatters, long ago. I was married for 18 months at that time, and father to Ian for six months. I was writing articles and making photographs, the same as now. I had the same aspirations then as now—to be happy and fulfilled; to travel and move about the world; to climb mountains and cliffs and explore wild places; to love and be loved, and to share companionship. |
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The stories of our lives are like screenplays that feature yourself as the central character, perhaps the hero or the antihero on the mythic odyssey, on the long day’s journey into both night and the light. We continually update the narrative of our life, visualizing scenes that define who we are, how we think about ourselves, and how we behave and interact with others. As a writer, I know that we’re interested in stories, in my story and in your story. We remember events, facts, and figures better in stories that give context and understanding to our lives. Our brains create narratives, with beginnings, middle years, and ending chapters.
I, like other people, divide my life into convenient chapters that are marked by events, with crucial remembered and reconstructed scenes that shaped the person that I think I am now. When I look at my life’s chapters, I see the same bundle of contradictions found in novels and stories with threads and themes of emancipation, advancement, atonement, epiphanies, piousness, roads taken or not taken, mistakes, and second chances. We pull from these stories of our past to make decisions that will eventually become scenes from our life story.
I, like other people, divide my life into convenient chapters that are marked by events, with crucial remembered and reconstructed scenes that shaped the person that I think I am now. When I look at my life’s chapters, I see the same bundle of contradictions found in novels and stories with threads and themes of emancipation, advancement, atonement, epiphanies, piousness, roads taken or not taken, mistakes, and second chances. We pull from these stories of our past to make decisions that will eventually become scenes from our life story.