Opinion: Trying to Remember What I Was Like Before

Society changes us throughout life so thoroughly that it’s hard to reconnect with who we were at the start

Photo byLuna Lovegood on Pexels

Recently I’ve found myself engaged in a number of conversations about men’s mental health, and it had me wondering where the emotional repression that most men engage in really comes from. The obvious answer is “society,” so I began to think back and ask myself, What was I like before? It’s interesting to reflect on the way the psyche develops throughout our youth.

As babies, we lack any self-awareness, and we’re completely innocent. We act as our unadulterated selves, entirely true to our wants and inclinations, with no filter. You can see at an early age, maybe two or three, as children begin to get crafty, and they can try to deceive to get what they want — and otherwise act to manipulate the world around them.

At some point, children start to become conscious of their social presence. They recognize that their relationships, and generally their reception by society, is determined by their behavior. Many become diffident and shy here in a way they previously weren’t. This is where we start to mold ourselves to fit in.

By the time kids enter their teen years, we can see just how far the assimilation has come, as groups of friends walk around with clothes all styled in the same way, the same taste in music, using the same slang, and even adopting a lot of the same mannerisms.

It’s around this age when we really come to be at odds with the less malleable portions of ourselves too. We hate that we’re awkward, or wish our bodies looked differently, or that we could perform at a higher level at whatever it is we wish to compete in. Our self-acceptance is at its lowest point, as is our self-esteem. We’ve undergone a complete range of motion, from one born acting in exact accordance with our natural propensities to one that laments they cannot functionally erase their individuality and melt into the crowd and expectations surrounding them.

As we get older, and enter adulthood, many of us work to regain what was lost. Our confidence grows and with it the ability to stand by our idiosyncrasies. But the end result is typically a being lost in a duality, half themselves and half their social environment, and unfortunately, unable to tell where the influence of one ends and the other begins.

I have happy memories of being a small child and not being self-conscience: not afraid of attention, smiling big and free, being rambunctious and playful. It’s a carefreeness I have never really been able to regain since.

I remember the formative moments, which seemed so innocuous at the time, that pushed me to change. It’s as if you set out on your little sailboat, following the breeze and the current, until you’re suddenly buffeted off your course by a squall here or forced to maneuver around a crag projecting from the water there.

You were born onto this Earth with no instruction manual, and you just follow what makes you smile and avoid what makes you sad or fearful, until all of sudden that’s not enough. One day something you like is called “weird,” and now you’re weird because of it.

The way you talk, your hobbies, your emotions, your wants, and everything else about you become objects of scrutiny. Do you want the warmth and fun of friendship? You feel you must change to get it. Do you find a person beautiful, and want to talk to them and kiss them? Well, perhaps your gut, or your haircut, or you choice of clothes will keep you from it.

Every person alive carries with them a tremendous and rarely referenced power: They can cure loneliness. They can give love and allow another to love them. This, which is so central to the happiness of every human, can only be granted to us by others. With it, they hold sway over us without even meaning to.

Some of us change so dramatically to get that from other people we eventually become incapable of recognizing ourselves. We squint with the mind’s eye and strain to recall memories of how we were in the beginning. They seem lost forever, and all that remains is this chimera — part me and part everyone else.

The saddest irony might be that we’re all flimsy in this regard, and it’s a dire case of the blind leading the blind. What people most gravitate to is confidence and the ability to be genuine. If we really want to be loved and accepted we should just be true to ourselves, but it’s so frightening to do so. We want to try again, but we can recall all the times before that it’s lead to rebuke and rejection.

It’s the fear itself, and the middling attempt that results of it, that drives others away. If we can ever learn to just abandon ego, drop the adornments and affected personality, and be brave enough to put ourselves out there as we are, we’d draw towards us, like a magnet, everyone worth pulling in.

And maybe we can’t remember what we were like before, but we have a good idea of what we really think and feel right now. We also know everything we’ve been hiding about our life circumstances. It’s time to just be open again — to just be ourselves.