Dear Dr K,
When I consider what I was like just five years ago, I find that past version of myself to be quite stupid in a lot of ways, full of mistaken assumptions. I feel like I am now much wiser than I used to be, but what if five years from now I discover that my 2013 self was just as stupid and misguided?
Pascha Taap
Dear Pascha,
As soon as you are old enough to feel nostalgia for the first time, you simultaneously become capable of recognising all the poor judgement of your youth. ‘Youth’ can mean anything in this context; like you said, memories from five years ago are enough to embarrass you. As a 15-year-old you will remember the things you did when you were 10 years old and slap your forehead as you wonder how you could have said or done the things you had done at that age.
You might believe that this is the process of turning into an adult, becoming the final, complete version of yourself which, once attained, will remain largely unchanged for the rest of your life. According to a new psychology study, however, it turns out that we never reach this state of completion. The changes in your personality and preferences will certainly be more dramatic and marked going from a teenager to a young adult, but that doesn’t mean there is an age when you reach a certain fixed state. Even your grandparents (if they are still around) are changing. Maybe your grandmother finds the Tamil soap operas she used to watch five or 10 years ago embarrassing in comparison to the ones she watches today (although that makes the assumption that the soap operas have changed over the years, which I am not sure they have).
I for example, five years ago, was a sworn devotee of bananas. I believed that they were the best fruit in terms of texture, packaging, and had an unmatchable flavour. I believed that I would cherish bananas for the rest of my life with the same intensity that I did then. Today, however, I find my enthusiasm for bananas waning. I still hold enormous respect for them, but I think my pomological preferences may be changing. I may even prefer oranges to bananas, something I could never have predicted five years ago.
The mistake we all make is believing that we have arrived, or almost arrived, at some final version of ourselves, when the truth is that each and every one of us is a work in constant progress, until the day we die, and we reach completion in death only because we can’t change any further, besides turning from flesh into dust.
Which is not to say that nothing stands the test of time and that your personality is completely overhauled every few years.
The parts of your personality that manage to stick, that you aren’t embarrassed by in retrospect, are what really make you who you are. The problem, however, is knowing what is going to stick permanently and what might end up changing in the future. The best you can do is not to be yourself but try and anticipate who you will be in five years and pretend at all times like you are your future self.
Yours questionably,
Dr K