So what you’re really asking is. Do I have the capability of looking back at the person that I was 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago and empathising with who I was as being a different person at an abstract level?
Yes, but it is likely far less pronounced if you’ve had a reasonably stable life.
I’ve had the experience of relocating thousands of miles away multiple times in my life, halved my weight, abandoned the dogmatic tribal mythos of my birth, and have been disabled from a broken neck and back due to the gross ineptitude of a terrible driver. That last one forced me to completely reinvent myself.
One of the hardest relevant experiences was relocating long distance then returning some years later. Nothing will be the same upon return. It will feel just as foreign as moving away to the new place did. Such an experience reveals just how much we all evolve with time and how we are a product of our environment.
Something as simple as living on a hilltop versus on a flat floodplain may have a major impact on how you exercise regularly, and that may shape or come to define you in profound ways. Such changes are essentially a different person. Your hormones, interactions, mood, interests, and sleep patterns are collectively what defines you on a fundamental layer.
That person may have made regretful mistakes. Those mistakes may be very different than who you have become and how you might handle them now. The question here in this post is really about how you perceive those regrets or mistakes now. Are they just a regrettable weight on you, perhaps motivational through the negative feedback of self shame? Or, are you empathetic towards that person, trusting that they did their best at the time, in the environment, given the same pressures and constraints; acknowledging the complexities involved well enough to admit you do not know you would be able to do things better now, even after age and experience? In other words, do you see past the fallacy of dichotomous oversimplification of hindsight to see yourself as a real human? There is room for empathy in that reflective abstract perspective.
So what you’re really asking is. Do I have the capability of looking back at the person that I was 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago and empathising with who I was as being a different person at an abstract level?
Yes, but it is likely far less pronounced if you’ve had a reasonably stable life.
I’ve had the experience of relocating thousands of miles away multiple times in my life, halved my weight, abandoned the dogmatic tribal mythos of my birth, and have been disabled from a broken neck and back due to the gross ineptitude of a terrible driver. That last one forced me to completely reinvent myself.
One of the hardest relevant experiences was relocating long distance then returning some years later. Nothing will be the same upon return. It will feel just as foreign as moving away to the new place did. Such an experience reveals just how much we all evolve with time and how we are a product of our environment.
Something as simple as living on a hilltop versus on a flat floodplain may have a major impact on how you exercise regularly, and that may shape or come to define you in profound ways. Such changes are essentially a different person. Your hormones, interactions, mood, interests, and sleep patterns are collectively what defines you on a fundamental layer.
That person may have made regretful mistakes. Those mistakes may be very different than who you have become and how you might handle them now. The question here in this post is really about how you perceive those regrets or mistakes now. Are they just a regrettable weight on you, perhaps motivational through the negative feedback of self shame? Or, are you empathetic towards that person, trusting that they did their best at the time, in the environment, given the same pressures and constraints; acknowledging the complexities involved well enough to admit you do not know you would be able to do things better now, even after age and experience? In other words, do you see past the fallacy of dichotomous oversimplification of hindsight to see yourself as a real human? There is room for empathy in that reflective abstract perspective.