Your Past Is a Chapter, Not the Whole Story

There is something oddly dissonant about how we remember other people, that once we think we understand someone, we start to obsess over everything else we know about them in relation to that first thought. Generosity tends to eclipse disappointment, while reliability follows betrayal up close. One wrong turn can define a lifetime, while an entire history of benign behavior can get folded up and tucked inside another, sharper lie. We tell ourselves that we're remembering things objectively, but there's rarely any objectivity at all when it comes to people. Memory is a fickle judge, prone to ruling in whatever way makes for a more satisfying story.

Perhaps it has something to do with being able to predict others. There's an appeal to knowing how someone will act, to being able to expect the worst from one person and the best from another. That kind of certainty serves people, making them feel more prepared to handle life's challenges. It's a coping mechanism of sorts, and perhaps a necessary one, since we all have to make snap judgments about the people we meet. The problem comes one the fact that those snap assessments can also be permanent ones, that our brains are designed to find patterns and then fail to notice when those patterns stop being accurate. We're good at putting people into boxes based on the evidence we have, but terrible at acknowledging that the evidence we have isn't enough to put those people there forever.

Our memories of other people are also, frequently, memories of ourselves. We all have that story, that defining moment that helps to explain the contours of some relationship, and that is almost always framed in the same way. We remember the argument that broke things up, the job we had no intention of leaving, the years spent feeling small and powerless, the promises we've made we can scarcely remember making. We keep returning to those ideas and those emotions as if the only reason they matter is what they say about us, as if the only reason we became ourselves is that we first became someone else.

The reason we return to those moments of our lives is precisely because of what they say about us, because there is proof, and proof is an incredibly seductive thing. When it comes to judging your own life, it is far too easy to accept that you made bad decisions simply because you remember them. Memory is responsible for what you feel it is responsible for, and you take your evidence to the courtroom of your mind with no regard for anything else that needs to be said. It is admirable to want to be honest with yourself, but honesty has its limits, just as memory does. When it comes to the things you regret, it becomes your responsibility to remember them, to hold onto them, not because you owe them any particular amount of time, but because you owe the people you've hurt a more honest version of yourself.

There is a right and a wrong way to be accountable about your mistakes but neither of them have a lot to do with your ability to remember what went wrong. A memory is not an excuse, but when people fail to accept responsibility for their actions they are also failing to make things better for the people they've hurt, and for the version of themselves that still believes those actions were justified. There is only so much that can be accomplished by spending time in the past, even if you're spending it in a place that isn't meant to stay. There is a difference between carrying a lesson and carrying a sentence and there is far too much crossover between the two.

This is why I think that one of the bravest things anyone who has made a mistake can do is allow themselves to be someone they used to be. It isn't about rewriting the past, or acting as though nothing ever happened, or pretending that someone else's experiences don't make you capable of doing better. It's not easy to do any of those things, but it shouldn't need to be. A novel is only interesting because its chapters follow directly from one another, because what comes next is informed by what came before. No one reads chapter three as if it's all that matters simply because it came first, but the meaning of those early words is almost impossible to untangle from what follows. Similarly, no one person defines what I am capable of simply by virtue of existing in my life, but the ways I have chosen to behave around them continue to inform what those behaviors say about me.

When a person's mistakes are the sharpest contrast to the way they want the future to look, I think it becomes far too easy for them to conflate accountability with acceptance. If they feel responsible for their past, they also feel entitled to it, to this one specific version of themselves that they know is not who they need to be. They keep returning to those memories as proof that they cannot be any one specific way, but that also does not mean they are not who the rest of their life wants them to be. They carry what they have earned, their regrets, but they also carry the responsibility of living up to their potential, which means something different for everyone.

I have started to believe that it is one of the bravest things anyone can do to accept that they have not made the most interesting arguments about themselves. It has rarely, if ever, been easy for anyone to do any of those things, and I have yet to meet a person who thinks that life is only interesting if they behave in one particular way, that they have no capacity for anything more nuanced than who they were when they acted in the worst possible manner. There is no single reason for anything that happens, but the people who have been my favorites throughout my life have almost always been those who grew up to outgrow whatever made them that way in the first place.

It doesn't always come easily or quickly, and it certainly doesn't come without consequence. To move away from being someone familiar means disappointing people who have no expectation of you ever becoming anyone different. Some of them will continue to introduce you to the rest of the world in the same way, if only because they know you best, and others of them might struggle to accept that you might grow out of who you were when you first met. You can't ask them to trust you the way they did, if only because of the way you were before, but they also can't decide what you're capable of simply because of the way they remember you.

The older you get, the less I think you can predict who you are by looking at who you've been and what you've done. I think, instead, that you grow up to be someone defined by moments other people don't notice, by conversations where you were present in a way that made no one else think twice about it. You are defined by your willingness to do things the right way, even when few other people are willing to recognize that doing them that way makes any difference at all. You are defined by your ability to be better, even in small ways, even in ways that seem unremarkable, even in ways that no one will be able to recognize until long after it is too late to hold you to those standards any longer.

When you look back on your life and wonder whether the reason your past is so hard to acknowledge is because of who you were or how you wanted to be, I think it always comes down to being willing to accept the truth about who you truly wanted to become. You were right not to believe that other people could understand what you wanted to become if they barely understood who you already were, but your past is also far less complicated than the person you are today or the person you want to eventually be. What makes me who I am, what makes me capable of being someone better, is far less remarkable than what makes me human.