Aperture Shift
Revisiting some of my older writing here recently made me wonder why some memories fade completely while others remain vivid for decades. Some of what I had written twenty years ago brings back the place and time like it were yesterday, perfectly preserved in the ink. Yet, other entries read like the words of someone I do not recognize; I find it difficult to believe I ever knew the person whose words they were, let alone inhabited their mind. It is a strange sensation to be confronted by a ghost of yourself who speaks a language you no longer remember.
Despite this disconnect, I am not fundamentally altered as a person. Ideas and opinions simply got outdated and discarded over the years like old clothes from the wardrobe to make room for the new. I am the kind of person who holds on to pieces of wisdom, imagined slights, and signs of disrespect long past their useful date. While the wisdom tends to be internalized and woven into my character, the negative things eventually lose their heat. They don’t sting anymore; they just remain like mental debris that has nowhere else to go, cluttering the corners of my history.
There is a theory that memories born out of cognitive novelty outlast anything of more mundane provenance. Our brains seem to prioritize the first time we encounter a wonder or a terror, etching it deeply while letting the repetitive days blur into a grey static. However, novelty itself is a relative concept in the arc of a person’s lifetime. The threshold for what surprises us shifts as we age, moving the goalposts for what is deemed "memorable" by the subconscious.
What I would have considered completely extraordinary, or even impossible, as a child at some point became unremarkable. The aperture of my perception just widened as a function of age and cumulative life experience, letting in more light but perhaps less awe. This widening is likely why those older writings feel so alien now; they were written when the aperture was narrow, and the world felt sharper, louder, and entirely different than the one I navigate today.
Despite this disconnect, I am not fundamentally altered as a person. Ideas and opinions simply got outdated and discarded over the years like old clothes from the wardrobe to make room for the new. I am the kind of person who holds on to pieces of wisdom, imagined slights, and signs of disrespect long past their useful date. While the wisdom tends to be internalized and woven into my character, the negative things eventually lose their heat. They don’t sting anymore; they just remain like mental debris that has nowhere else to go, cluttering the corners of my history.
There is a theory that memories born out of cognitive novelty outlast anything of more mundane provenance. Our brains seem to prioritize the first time we encounter a wonder or a terror, etching it deeply while letting the repetitive days blur into a grey static. However, novelty itself is a relative concept in the arc of a person’s lifetime. The threshold for what surprises us shifts as we age, moving the goalposts for what is deemed "memorable" by the subconscious.
What I would have considered completely extraordinary, or even impossible, as a child at some point became unremarkable. The aperture of my perception just widened as a function of age and cumulative life experience, letting in more light but perhaps less awe. This widening is likely why those older writings feel so alien now; they were written when the aperture was narrow, and the world felt sharper, louder, and entirely different than the one I navigate today.
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Reflections