In a vlogbrother’s post last week, Hank Green made the statement: “You have no obligations to your former selves. They know less then you, and they also don’t exist”
And I’ve been thinking about that, specifically how I’ve interacted with myself, past, present and future (“interaction” here being defined using the “throwing a ball and catching it” sort of definition.)
In so, so many ways, I am my worst critic. I often silently underestimate how long certain work should take, than beat myself up for failing to do the work in the incorrect amount of time.
So in that case, maybe I could take Hank’s advice, and prioritize my older, wiser perspective.
That said, I am often one of my biggest fans.
I often jot down notes, ideas, future projects, and then… forget about them, until future Kyle stumbles upon them, reads them, and more often than not appreciates the idea, and throws it back on the “todo queue”.
But lets take it point by point… *Does* your past self know less?
The way I often dive into topics, as I flip through my project notebook, and look at diagrams and lists of ideas… That Kyle was DEEP in a head space on the topic that I no longer have memory or access to.
It is very weird, marveling at the work that your own hand and mind did a few years ago. When an inkling for a project starts, I often think about it for weeks in the back of my head, roughly forming, brainstorming and winnowing ideas.
I have no memory of doing this, I can just see the evidence, the quality of the work that, I, present day Kyle, cannot have done.
And to Hank’s second point, that they don’t exist. I’m not sure that is material (or true). I am not convinced time is a fully destructive force, and the state of myself (and the entire universe for that matter) might be as fully etched into a plank time length on the halls of eternity just as assuredly as the rest stop you passed several miles back on the free way continues to exist, regardless of if you can see it.
But for the sake of argument, and for the brevity of this post, let us assume he no longer exists. Does the destruction of the person destroy the obligation?
I can’t see how it would. I mean, I guess it makes it a little less likely to be an awkward confrontation, but it does seem to be of the same form as “would you steal things if you knew no one would catch you?” sort of question. The fact that the person can never be disappointed in you for never fulfilling “a promise” does not materially effect how I’d feel about myself.
But, maybe then, we’re back to the question on how we interact with our current self. Which perhaps, I need to work on more than my temporal relationships.
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