New Skin

I looked at some pictures from a couple of years ago just now, and I felt very strange as I was paging through them. It felt like I was looking at pictures of someone else. I remember a time when the person in those pictures was me, but it isn't anymore. And yet that person has become me. It kind of reminds me of skin. There are lots of layers of cells that make up skin, and if you lost them all at once because you wanted new skin, you would not be in very good condition. You'd be dead, in fact. And yet, our skin is constantly being replaced - the outer layers being sloughed (I don't think I have ever had the chance to type that word before) off and new layers being added from beneath. After a while, all the old stuff is gone, and you have an entirely new skin. Nothing that once was still is. And yet you are still you, and the new skin feels fully yours.

That's how I feel about the old me that I see in pictures. I didn't just abandon myself and become a new person all at once, but I am constantly changing and being changed. And by now not much of who I once was is left over (I know this is a very large exaggeration, but it's how I feel sometimes). So when I look at pictures, it is looking back at something that is no more. It is remembering who I was, and some of the things that have made me into who I am. Keeping pictures and looking back at them is admitting that where you have been has brought you to where you are. That even though that immature, naive or silly person is not who you are anymore, you could never have become the person you are without first being that person.

In a way, keeping pictures is kind of like keeping scabs...