A Message to ‘My Past Self’
Almost an entirely different entity, yet essentially the same, aren’t we?
You. Shadow of mine.
Your thoughts, your words, your actions; they have resulted in what I am today. Some of them, nay perhaps most of them, I would not dare think, say, or do today.
You are my proof of growth; an intangible evidence that I am no longer you, I am no longer the person I was a decade, a year, a month, a week, an hour, a minute, a second ago.
‘The only constant is change’ — Heraclitus
And oh! How I’ve changed!
… or have I?
I say ‘you’
I really mean ‘me’
all that you thought, all that you said, all that you did
that was all me, wasn’t it?
It’s just easier to blame a transient shadow that no longer exists in the present, blame a Phantom of the past, and attribute my sorrows, mistakes, and miseries, to the person ‘I no longer am.’
Yet, if I could be brave enough to take accountability of my agency, which ‘you’ no longer have, which ‘you’ have given away for my beck and call to manipulate as I wish, I would confess that ‘you’ and I are not so different after all.
In fact, we are the same person.
Only with different circumstances, different environments, different… external factors and internal factors, et cetera et cetera.
But we are one and the same.
I hope to write this in apology for the many times I have put the blame on you to avoid problems at present. I would like to take back all the responsibility and accountability for what I thought, said, and did. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Even in the course of writing this article, there are already multiple afterimages of ‘you’ at my disposal.
I don’t think I need them now, I think I will be content at what all of ‘you’ have ultimately done to shape who ‘I’ am now.
A little stream-of-consciousness writing exercise…
Thank you all for reading up to this point.
I wish you all great health and happiness.