Pity To Myself

"I will presently pen down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself into my mortal preparation, and by midnight look to hear further from me."  All’s Well that Ends Well (Act III, Scene VI).

I came home and the family was watching some old family video, and there I was, in the video, dancing. Eeeeek! Why can't I ever look at myself in a photo, video or listen to myself on an audio tape, without feeling awkward? Without judging the event and that person with such a critical eye?

Here is the person who I have spent the most time with for my entire life, know the best, cared for the most? Here is that same nose, hand, chin, chest, lip and shoulder that I have always - known. And yet they look strangely unfamiliar.

When I see a video of myself I am overcome with a puzzling unease. It is difficult to ignore myself even though there are other more precious loved ones in the video than I, but my eye is constantly drawn to me.

Why is it that I am judging my self with such a critical eye, a lens that I would not even reserve for my worst enemies? I would take greater pity at a fool, be more gracious to a whore, less damning of a monster.

The other interesting phenomenon is that - the more recent the photo or video, the harsher the critique, the older the photo or video, the more the tenderness.

I would never judge anyone else so harshly as this person, and yet this is the person that I know better than anyone else.

Why do I go through this self annihilating ritual over someone who no longer exists?  Just like any loved one that has passed on, parts of this person is inside of me right now.

It is also interesting that the reverse occurs with my writing. When I read old writing (as I will perhaps these very words one day), my eye is not as cruel. I approach writing with a greater sense of empathy and compassion.

The more recent the writing the more I appreciate it, the older it is, the more embarrassing it becomes. I guess the difference with writing is that it is talking back to me from my past, it is addressing me, whereas a photo or video is just hanging out there like washing on the line, with no real purpose, just waving in the wind, waiting to dry out.

This experience of judging these 'old me's' is neither mundane or sacred. It all seems so irrelevant. I find this musing right now kind of awkward. Why am I wasting time writing about a life that I should be living- right now? Enough. This is -so over done and past.

"I am I.   
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:   
Then fly: what! from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What! myself upon myself?   
Alack! I love myself. Wherefore? for any good   
That I myself have done unto myself?   
O! no: alas! I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.   
I am a villain. Yet I lie; I am not.   
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.   
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,   
And every tale condemns me for a villain.   
Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree:   
Murder, stern murder, in the dir’st degree;
All several sins, all us’d in each degree,   
Throng to the bar, crying all, ‘Guilty! guilty!’   
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;   
And if I die, no soul will pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself   
Find in myself no pity to myself?"
Richard III (Act V, Scene III)

Comments

[Brittany]

I don't think it's such a useless question.
Maybe...the reason you learn to love old photos is that you realize that you weren't as ugly as you thought you were. I realize that now about some of the photos taken when I was ten.
What you've written is different. Older writing doesn't have as much experience and wisdom as the you have now. Some how, the questions that you once considered relevant seem ridiculous. You see the younger, dumber version and hate it.
One shows the good looks you had once and the other shows how inexperienced/dumb you were.
That's how I think it goes anyway.

[Kashmir Birk]

I think you are absolutely right in many respects. Older writing is less 'pretty' but perhaps not because of its physical elegance (which is an illusion or at the very least all relative anyway) but perhaps rather because it represents less of us than we know of ourselves today.

Photos of more innocent times invoke a tenderness because we don’t realise just how beautiful we really are today (something to do with societal pressures to look a certain way and never quite being good enough for the marketing airbrushed props that we are so slavishly required to compare ourselves to).

I respectfully disagree with your sense that this is not a waste of time. I still believe that all of this nonsense is an absolutely useless waste of time because the only thing that matters in the end, is to be here now and these deliberations are soaking up time to be here now with flights of fancy that go nowhere, achieve nothing, are a waste of time.

What we do right now shapes who we are right now, which determines who will be and be the only thing that we can ever look back upon.

Kashmir.