“The main thing experience has taught me is that one has to sort of hone their relationship to time.”
“To be here, you first got to die, so I gave it a try.”
— John Frusciante
I was heading out to lunch with my colleagues the other day, when we asked each other the question, “What was the dumbest thing you did in high school?”
Back when I was 16, I stayed at a boarding school. In our dorms, we didn’t have rooms. Instead, we had open cubicles that housed two beds and one study table in between. So this meant that anybody could sneak into your cubicle if they wanted to.
My neighbor in the cubicle next to mine was a big, fat guy, who wore thick glasses and had a deep, gruff voice. I always thought he looked and sounded like a politician — a stoned one at that. He always seemed to be half-awake, and he often enunciated his words in slow-motion, which unintentionally made him funny. I couldn’t exactly call him a friend, though, because he still hates me today, and understandably so.
One quiet weekend afternoon, I was just terribly bored, so I took a walk around the dorm. My neighbor had a habit of sleeping without a shirt on. So, when I saw him napping in his bustiness, a lightbulb suddenly went off in my head.
I went back to my place and brought with me my shaving cream, which I used to spray on his nipples. I couldn’t remember how long it took for him to notice, but when he did, the whole dorm could literally hear him scream, “Who the fuck sprayed shaving cream on my tits?!“
After that, I spent much of my time that day hiding away from him. But of course, when I did eventually encounter him later that night, I got a good scolding from him. Some neighboring bastard must have ratted me out after seeing me scurry away with a can of shaving cream in my hand.
I gave my colleagues a good laugh with this story. But when I really thought back about it, I find it so hard to believe just how stupid I was to do something like that. It feels like that 16 year old me wasn’t me at all, but a complete stranger. And this got me reflecting on the many different people that I have been throughout the years — the attitudes I embraced, the beliefs about myself and the world that I once held sacred and later dropped.
Mark Manson said that if you cringe at your old self, it’s a good thing. This means you’ve grown. And you should never stop cringing.
We tend to look at our old selves with embarrassment, and even regret. But the fact that you feel that overwhelming sense of discomfort is proof that you’ve progressed as a human being. If you look back and see no difference between who you were then and who you are now, you should probably be worried.
That isn’t a sign of consistency. That’s a sign of stagnation.
We all change in certain aspects, and to different extents. And that’s okay. Our priorities shift, our interests evolve, and even our relationships change.
The kinds of people that you were once drawn to — be it friends or romantic partners — might not appeal to you anymore. And if they still do, maybe you haven’t grown as much as you think.
I guess the uncomfortable and scary thing about change is that it feels like a little death, in the sense that you’re losing a part of yourself. But it’s necessary for that part of us to die, so that a better, wiser part of ourselves could emerge and thrive.
So, instead of resisting change, learn to embrace it, in spite of how hard it may feel at first. Instead of fearing that you’re losing who you were, appreciate the person you’re becoming today.
At the end of the day, life isn’t about clinging to a fixed identity. It’s about continuously evolving, surprising yourself, and maybe — just maybe — learning not to spray shaving cream on people’s nipples anymore.
Izzat Zailan 