Friday, September 09, 2005


				
				
					 
					 
To my older self

					 
				

				


				
When Thoreau first went on about how he had never learned a single thing from old people, I pooh-poohed him. But lately, it's come to my attention how alarmingly silly many old people are. So when Proust says in The Guermantes Way: 
How many women's lives, lives of which little enough is known (for we all live in different worlds according to our age, and the discretion of their elders prevents the young from forming any clear idea of the past and taking in the whole spectrum), have been divided thus into contrasting periods, the last being entirely devoted to the reconquest of what in the second had been so light-heartedly flung to the winds! (249)
I have to admit that he makes sense - absence does make the heart grow fonder. It is possible, then, that instead of being wise and perceptive I will become one of the vain old women on Nip/Tuck who require monthly Botox injections. Or a money grubber, a pretentious dogmatist, or one of those insipid suburban moms who do nothing but drive their kids to soccer practice and read chick-lit. Nobody really wants to be these people; yet they exist.

It's a dreary thought. Far from improving upon my flaws and bad habits, growing older might cause me to develop new ones.

So just in case it turns out that I am wiser now than I will be later (God forbid!), or because I might have a better vantage point from which to comment on certain things since it's all so far-removed, I think I'm going to start writing down notes to myself. Plastic surgery is ridiculous not only because it's self-indulgent and a waste of money, but because it propigates beauty stereotypes and makes other people feel unattractive, thus causing an endless feedback loop. Plus, just looking younger doesn't make you younger - you'll have to deal with the fact of old age sooner or later, so you might as well learn to live with it sooner. And anyways, nobody takes nubile women seriously. Stuff like this seems so intuitive right now, but I'll write it down just in case I think differently later. That way, I'll at least have a reason to reconsider.

Now if only my older self could write notes to me.


				


				

					posted by Debbie at 7:05 PM