Thursday, September 20. 2007
Retrospection
When you look back into your past at the people you once new, the situations you were once in, the places you once frequented, and the things you once did, how exactly do you feel? Do you feel sad? Angry? Regretful? Revolted?
Something the Victorian education system failed to teach me is that history is important; it tells you where you've been, who you are now, and where you're going. Without history, we'd all be moronic shells, bumping into the same problems we never knew existed and never really going anywhere new.
Lately I've been in a very retrospective mood. Most people would tell me that I'm living in the past and it's time to move on and look forwards into the future, however my personal “balance philosophy” tells me that a little retrospection is a good thing. (I will write about that later, in great detail, I promise Steve!)
I'm not jovially reminiscent of what it was like living in a country with government 102 days ago, but rather I'm talking about my life just before the 00's.
Where most people would say the time in their life that formed their personality was during university, I cannot say that having never bothered. I would now say that two defining periods in my life were my so called “radio station days” and my serendipitous arrival in Belgium.
Maybe it's because the illustrious Jonathan and Alanya have resurfaced on the scope, or maybe it's because I'm heading back to the arse end of the world for chrissy. Maybe it's the impending arrival of this year's couch tourist who just happens to be an ex of the era; but whatever the reason, I'm stuck thinking of my life from 1996 until the turn of the (cardinal) “millennium”.
At the risk of sounding like Wil Wheaton, I'm disappointed I was so naïve and childish, and I missed out on a fair few opportunities because of it. While I don't want to go back and change things, nor do I want to go back to where I was in life, I still have great fondness for those days and miss the lost friends.
I won't bore you with a long panegyric of key events, since the memories are still vivid and would only be interesting to me. Instead, I'll save all of that for when I'm old and senile, so I can exaggerate and prolong each nostalgic story every time I recount them; like… nobody I know…
Scrolling through my list of old ICQ contacts though, so many more memories I had forgotten came flooding back — a mixed bag of pain and hilarity. It's interesting how life moves along so quickly, and while the people and the places may be different, so much remains the same that we tend not to notice.
I shall now return to my quiescent dysphoria retrospection.
So are you heading back permanently or just for the christmas?
Personally, I don’t feel any one particular way about the past. I never understood those who said that school days were the happiest days of your life. My school days sucked mightily, and there are many people whos obituaries I look forward to reading from those days.
College days were good, but I wasted plenty of them too. I used to think that the friends I made in college would be friends I would have with me through life. But that was naiive optimism.
I try to focus on the fact that college taught me about life as well as about applied maths. Some lessons were easy, some were hard. Some stuck. Some did not.
But that’s the thing about those lessons. You don’t have to go to college to learn them.
At the risk of sounding patronising, let me illustrate one lesson here…
"I’m disappointed I was so naïve and childish"
reminds me of
"Boy, 5 years ago, I was such an idiot. Unlike today." is a phrase you will use approximately every 5 years of your life.
We never stop being idiots. We just gain the perspective to realise how idiotic we were, most recently. But never in the here and now.
Just for Christmas: Nothing special!
Fortunately part of keeping a blog is a bit like keeping IRC logs in that when you look back on them most of what you read causes you to cringe.
Note to future-Simon: try not to cringe.
Life is ONE BIG LESSON.
If you can look back and say ‘God, I was an idiot, I have learnt so much
since then’.
Then you have achieved something, You have progressed to the next level.
Anything else is mere stagnation.
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