I remember

Yesterday I had a little impromptu gmail chat with Rach, prompted by my sister wanting to know how old her mom was. I generally (actually, as a rule) avoid chatting people when I see they're logged on-- I feel like I'm invading their few minutes of internet time they have to check their mail. Anyway, yesterday we ended up having a nice little exchange and I reminded her of this saying she had told me, like a philosophy, which has been one of the tenets of my life and that I use to reflect on my behaviour and way of looking at myself in relation to other people (!!!), I mean one of the top ten, and she was like, 'oh, I said that? hmm...'

SO IT GOT ME THINKING (more, because this is something I sorta think about a lot) about how we perceive each other and how our memories of other people and ourselves are different from theirs of them and us, and sometimes somebody from our past can say, this is who you were for/to me, and it's different from what you remember, and it can make you feel good or bad. And sometimes when we tell our friends what we remember (this is perhaps more 'eventful' for me because I live far away from my old friends and am one of the world's very worst correspondents and I have a very bad memory, so I'm not always reminiscing and kaffeeklatsching (sp) with everybody) we can give them new perspective by reminding them of the old.

Somebody on Oprah (Dr Oz?) said that our basic personalities are formed by the age of six. So people I knew in grade school are the same people I knew in grade school, with just more layers of sophistication or responsibilities or baby spit-up. And even though I say I have a bad memory, I may remember that a certain friend was a person who took charge of her life at a young age, figured out what she wanted, and is one of the very few people I know that is pursuing what she loves today, professionally and personally. So when her spunky daughter is being a bucking billy goat, she should take heart in the fact that at the very least she is an excellent role model, a living example, and shouldn't be so hard on herself.

You probably don't know that one of my favorite movies is The Kid, that Disney movie with Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin, where a forty-ish guy somehow meets his 12-year-old (?) self from the past and they deal with their (self-) loathing and learn to love themselves/each other. It's not that hokey. What does it mean to live up to your own dreams and ideals? Should you try to live up to dreams you had for yourself when you were younger? What does it mean to let yourself down? Have your ideals simply changed or have you failed yourself? There's this line where Breslin says, "I'm forty and I don't have a dog?!?! I'm a LOSER!" which particularly resonates. I often wonder what my 15-year-old self would think of me now. I don't mean about being sick, she'd be freaked. But would she be impressed and excited that she moved away and was managing to live in a different place and had had my experiences, or would she see a good deal of these 20 years as wasted, her dreams as squandered? Just wondering...