I was invited to a barbecue by Dola last weekend, just happened to bump into someone I’d known back in high school, ALL THOSE MANY YEARS AGO.
Thing of it is, they didn’t remember me all that well, which I was rather glad of. Glad the opinion they’d formed about the guy in front of them wasn’t overly based on the opinion she’d had of an awkward 17 year old.
Because, and here’s something you’ve never heard before: people change.
The person I was at 17 is similar to who I am now, but I hope not too similar. I hope that the past 15 years have changed me, have caused me to grow, evolve, yeah?
Thing of it is, I don’t know many people from back then, and I think that’s no accident. The people you know when you’re young, they have a very firm image in their minds of you, and it can be hard for that image, that opinion, to change as you change. It’s not uncommon to find yourself bristling at the way you’re treated by old high school friends who still see you as you were in those early days on the road to adulthood. Who still want that relationship, that dynamic they had with you in the beginning.
Think of your parents, who still see you, and maybe even treat you, as the little kid they watched grow up.
Now think about an artist, someone who’s developed and refined a style. Someone who’s built up a fanbase around that style. Over time, that artist evolves, evolves like you did from high school to now, smoothing out the rough edges, making necessary course corrections.
The artist isn’t exactly the same as they once were, they’ve changed.
And yet. There are fans who began following the artist because of that first style, that original feeling. And it’s not about which style was better, which version of the artist was better.
It’s not about which you was better, young you or current you. It’s that you’ve changed.
You are not the person you once were.
Which is as it should be.
As good friends, as good fans, we have to allow those people, those artists to change. Sometimes they’ll change in ways we don’t like, but to attempt to stifle that change, to not recognize it, that’s to attempt to subvert the Way Things Should Be. Ignoring change, ignoring growth, ignoring evolution, that’s a dog that just won’t hunt.
I spent the remainder of that barbecue last weekend weirded out by a reminder of my past, of the person I used to be, of the way I used to make my decisions. Of how different things were.
And then I was glad that the difference was significant enough to be weirded out by.
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