Put Yourself UP!

The other day I brought up some distant memory with Jack, my ever-growing thirteen-soon-to-be-fourteen year old, something along the lines of "Remember when such and such happened and you were so excited?" I can't remember the exact memory I brought up, but I remember his reaction. He made a face, flapped his arms around and mimicked his younger self as if to say "How dorky and uncool was I?"

As I was on my long run this morning, the wheels began to spin as I thought about this. Obviously Jack is at the stage where he'd be way too cool to hang with his younger self. I find myself thinking about younger Jack and older Jack as two different people, even know I know they are one and the same. I feel protective of the younger Jack, the boy who was so overly enthusiastic about everything. His reactions at age seven, eight, even nine were priceless - he was always so "over the top" about everything. I remember taking him to Caps games and just enjoying his craziness, the way he would dance during all the songs and act in that un-selfconscious way that younger kids have.

Today's Jack is too cool for such nonsense - his reactions have lessened to a certain degree. Yesterday I took him to get a vaccination and he didn't even flinch when the needle went in. The younger Jack would have hyper-ventilated and whimpered and maybe even screamed at the sight of the needle.

It made me start to think about how we tend to put our former selves down. I certainly do it. When I think about my younger self I tend to think about the negatives. I was such a "sensitive" child and cried at the drop of a hat. When I was a teenager I was horribly awkward and shy and feared interacting with people I didn't know. When I was a college student I had NO idea what I was doing. And my twenties? Oh, wow - I was just so STUPID! I didn't know anything about being an adult and I wasted a lot of time worrying about silly things, like who I was going to go bar-hopping with on Friday night and why it was so hard to find a boyfriend. I'd go back and tell my 25 year old self not to sweat it (more on that to come in a future post).

So as I was running this morning I decided to go back and instead of thinking about the negatives of my former self I would think of the positives. After all, who we were earlier in life shapes who we are now and who we will eventually become.

I decided that as a child I was indeed sensitive, but I was also imaginative and creative and found millions of ways to occupy myself in the days before electronics and technology took over. As a teenager I was certainly shy and awkward, but I was smart and focused and a good friend to those who got to know me. My college self may have been lost and unfocused at times, but those were the years when I discovered how to come out of my shell and truly like myself for me, not for how I thought others perceived me. And my twenties? Well, I had a hell of a good time and I did eventually meet my husband, who was definitely worth the wait.

So I say - don't put your younger self down, but rather put yourself UP! I'm turning 45 in a few weeks. All those prior stages of my life made me who I am today. Who I am today will determine who I will become in another twenty years. And I'm pretty happy with that.

Someday Jack will look back on his younger self and think the same thing. Time and experience will do that to you.