there's getting older, and there's understanding the nature of getting older.
about 5-7 years ago i read a story by jorge luis borges called "el otro" (except it was an english translation). then and now, i've always liked his work, but to me that short story was utterly crap and artificial.
the story is about borges, an old man, sitting by the charles river in boston, and somehow encountering a younger version of himself, from 30 years ago. they act like disparate characters, with some expected twists like disbelief ..
.. but what seemed most false to me was the ease by which the older man failed to remember himself as a younger man. utter crap, i thought, who doesn't remember himself?
being older now, i think i'm beginning to understand.
that younger self of mine, at age 18, is related to me, in that his brain was once my brain .. at least in the sense of theseus's ship. it would be incorrect, however, to say that we are the same person .. but at the time, that wasn't what i was disputing.
what i didn't realise at the time was the faulty nature of memory.
even now i have a hard time remembering high school and the details of my first year at university. having taken old lessons for granted, i wonder if it really took me a dozen years to learn what i had learned, from grades 1 through 12: for example, the amount of mathematics i learned over that time is trivial. i may as well had spent my time memorizing chess tournament games.
what i can't account for is the biology and sociology of that child i once was.
of those things i keep from the past, impressions form the majority, and my impression throughout life has been that life is difficult .. something my current self would scoff at. having lost the exact state of my mind in that past moment, my only guess is this: of those features of life that were hard for me (like fitting in, taking AP exams, breaking 5:00 for 1600m) they were hard because someone .. be it my family, friends, peers, or general agents of society .. convinced me that they were hard or supposed to be hard.
(in practice, they may as well have been hard; up to perceptions, there is really no difference.)
so to make a short story long, what i meant to say is that i think i understand that borges story now. at the time i was too young to understand what he meant; i had to be older and know what it means to grow older first.
the story is about borges, an old man, sitting by the charles river in boston, and somehow encountering a younger version of himself, from 30 years ago. they act like disparate characters, with some expected twists like disbelief ..
.. but what seemed most false to me was the ease by which the older man failed to remember himself as a younger man. utter crap, i thought, who doesn't remember himself?
being older now, i think i'm beginning to understand.
that younger self of mine, at age 18, is related to me, in that his brain was once my brain .. at least in the sense of theseus's ship. it would be incorrect, however, to say that we are the same person .. but at the time, that wasn't what i was disputing.
what i didn't realise at the time was the faulty nature of memory.
even now i have a hard time remembering high school and the details of my first year at university. having taken old lessons for granted, i wonder if it really took me a dozen years to learn what i had learned, from grades 1 through 12: for example, the amount of mathematics i learned over that time is trivial. i may as well had spent my time memorizing chess tournament games.
what i can't account for is the biology and sociology of that child i once was.
of those things i keep from the past, impressions form the majority, and my impression throughout life has been that life is difficult .. something my current self would scoff at. having lost the exact state of my mind in that past moment, my only guess is this: of those features of life that were hard for me (like fitting in, taking AP exams, breaking 5:00 for 1600m) they were hard because someone .. be it my family, friends, peers, or general agents of society .. convinced me that they were hard or supposed to be hard.
(in practice, they may as well have been hard; up to perceptions, there is really no difference.)
so to make a short story long, what i meant to say is that i think i understand that borges story now. at the time i was too young to understand what he meant; i had to be older and know what it means to grow older first.