Performance, changing
2003 03 10
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I realised, after speaking with an old friend today, that sometimes when you meet up with people from the past what you are having is not so much a conversation, as it is a performance. You are not reliving old times, shared memories, it is a dance of expectations, of what they remember you as, of what you remember them as, and you perform under those expectations. You talk as you were, not as you are. And with most of those old friends it never goes beyond that point. You do not rediscover. There is nothing new. Sometimes it almost seems as if there can't be, as if the barrier of the past will not allow a future. As if, even, there is no desire for there to be anything but constant re-performance of what has gone before. You do what you are used to doing, time and again. I think the worst thing that can be said of times like these, these "performances", is that they can become boring if repeated too frequently.
It could, I suppose, sound hopeless, but I don't think it is. There are things that happen in your life, points of change, plateaus, occurrences, that alter who and what you are, or places you simply move on from that can't be shared by what existed before that time or what you found during it.
It all reminds me, too, of another conversation I had today about how some people's worldviews never change, and why. Partly, it's due to people assuming things don't alter unless they have evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, a status quo needs to be clung to for many reasons, good and bad. And sometimes the lack of a changed worldview is for far more negative reasons. Like not wanting to admit things can alter because it would contradict their own worldviews, and that is something some folks have too much pride to allow - to allow for others to change, or the world to change, or for there to be something different and contrary to how they wish it to be. Evidence to the contrary is sometimes simply not "seen" by some folks, or, if seen, misinterpreted.
That latter, though, is too negative. I don't wish to deal in too many overt and contrived negatives any longer. I prefer, instead, to think that people simply haven't yet discovered the changes in what's around them, just haven't seen the new, and, when they do, their views will alter accordingly.
The only reason it sticks so much in my mind right now is that this person made a comment about me, one that struck a nerve, which would have been completely correct based on how he knew me before, correct, even, of the person I was a year ago. It's not correct now, but there's no way he could have known that, so I don't hold it against him.