every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh
Imagine you could look at your life unrolled like a strip of film. Not even the whole thing: just a segment. Say, a few years. Imagine seeing the different phases, the different relationships, laid next to each other. The backgrounds, the scenes, naturally change, but more interesting are the people. Their images change; some fade in and out and in again; sometimes, from one slide to the next, they look like completely different people, as the way you see them changes.
Am I the only one who's fascinated with trying to do this? Of course I'm not. But this is why I'm continually rerunning my personal history in my head. And reading my old notebooks, and talking with friends about the way things used to be. I think it's a way of trying to cheat time-- time and changeability. I wanted to say "mutability" but I thought that might sound pretentious and like I've taken too many lit classes. Which I have.
If you're anything like me, you're very wary of your own tendency to change. I mean look at us. The thing we want passionately today, the thing we long for and think we'll never be happy without, tomorrow means nothing to us. The thing we thought was most stable and unshakable in our lives is gone before we can even realize what happened. The thing we said we'd never do becomes second nature. And how are we supposed to trust ourselves? We know too well how different we're likely to feel from one week to the next.
Really, my man Chesterton says this a lot better than I do. So I will crave your indulgence and quote him.
***
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man.
***
Aha, that's where I got 'mutability' from. I'm glad I didn't put it in above, you'd have thought I was trying to copy him.
So I am acutely aware that I am in a continual process of becoming "another man" (in the old, gender-neutral sense of course), and it creeps me out a little. So at least one reason for my constant revisiting of the past is to maintain some sense of continuity with my former self. She is no more, but she was, and she dreamed as passionately as I do now, and I feel some need to honor her, because she can no longer speak for herself. So I remember who she was and what she believed and who she loved, and in so doing manage to feel a little less like Time's plaything.
I want to talk more about vows too, because that's what the Chesterton essay I quoted is really about, but I'm out of steam. Ironically, I refrain from saying I'll revisit the subject later because I know I probably won't want to, which is exactly what he talks about in the essay. It is a really interesting subject, though... tell you what. I'll link to it, and you can read the essay yourself if you want. It's not that long. And since he's a much better writer than I am, you really ought to read his stuff instead of this journal. It'll be much more worth your while.
Am I the only one who's fascinated with trying to do this? Of course I'm not. But this is why I'm continually rerunning my personal history in my head. And reading my old notebooks, and talking with friends about the way things used to be. I think it's a way of trying to cheat time-- time and changeability. I wanted to say "mutability" but I thought that might sound pretentious and like I've taken too many lit classes. Which I have.
If you're anything like me, you're very wary of your own tendency to change. I mean look at us. The thing we want passionately today, the thing we long for and think we'll never be happy without, tomorrow means nothing to us. The thing we thought was most stable and unshakable in our lives is gone before we can even realize what happened. The thing we said we'd never do becomes second nature. And how are we supposed to trust ourselves? We know too well how different we're likely to feel from one week to the next.
Really, my man Chesterton says this a lot better than I do. So I will crave your indulgence and quote him.
***
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man.
***
Aha, that's where I got 'mutability' from. I'm glad I didn't put it in above, you'd have thought I was trying to copy him.
So I am acutely aware that I am in a continual process of becoming "another man" (in the old, gender-neutral sense of course), and it creeps me out a little. So at least one reason for my constant revisiting of the past is to maintain some sense of continuity with my former self. She is no more, but she was, and she dreamed as passionately as I do now, and I feel some need to honor her, because she can no longer speak for herself. So I remember who she was and what she believed and who she loved, and in so doing manage to feel a little less like Time's plaything.
I want to talk more about vows too, because that's what the Chesterton essay I quoted is really about, but I'm out of steam. Ironically, I refrain from saying I'll revisit the subject later because I know I probably won't want to, which is exactly what he talks about in the essay. It is a really interesting subject, though... tell you what. I'll link to it, and you can read the essay yourself if you want. It's not that long. And since he's a much better writer than I am, you really ought to read his stuff instead of this journal. It'll be much more worth your while.