If I look closely at my old self, there’s a lot which is now dead

By David McElroy · June 23, 2019

Did you ever play Angry Birds on your phone?

I’ve never spent time playing serious video games, but I enjoyed that silly casual game when it first came out for the iPhone and I kept playing new levels as they were released for several years. Until this weekend, I hadn’t launched the game for a long, long time, but I played it for a few minutes Saturday.

Playing the game made me feel nostalgic and it put me in the frame of mind of that time in my life — around 10 years ago — when I was still playing it. It reminded me warmly of playing Angry Birds and Train Yard with a girlfriend who loved me to bring my iPad to her apartment so she could play, too.

I smiled warmly until a thought suddenly wiped that smile off my face. Thinking about those games and that part of my life made me realize something I had never consciously realized. I used to do something to that girlfriend which annoyed her — just to tease her — and I can’t believe that was me.

I realized with horror Saturday that if I saw another man acting that way toward his girlfriend, I would now call him a jerk. I have trouble recognizing this small part of myself. Was that really me?

I don’t recall the details of what I did, but I remember her being annoyed. She never made an issue of it, but I know she didn’t like it. When she was playing Train Yard, there was some information which she sometimes needed online which she needed me to look up on a separate device from the one on which she was playing.

Sometimes there were hundreds of ways to solve a level, and the creator of the game had a site which showed every solution that he knew of for each level. He encouraged us to look at others’ solutions to different levels of the puzzle.

I would look up what she wanted to know and then tease her with it. When she was most eager to see the information, I might flash it to her for a moment and then pull it away, frustrating her because she couldn’t see it long enough to figure out the complex solution she needed.

She would become very frustrated. And I would laugh.

This was like a cruel game to me — and I have absolutely no understanding now of why I did it. It’s like a childish part of my personality that led me to act like a jerk in a small way — for my own amusement at my own expense.

I don’t even recognize that part of myself anymore — and I have trouble reconciling who I am now with that behavior which makes me feel ashamed of myself at this point.

The relationship with that woman was never serious. We dated for about a year. Both of us had just come out of serious relationships and just needed someone comfortable to spend time with. I’ll never see her again and she has no place in my life, but I wish I could go back and act differently, at least as it relates to this one childish behavior.

The current me wouldn’t like a lot of things about the old me. When I’m honest enough with myself to look at myself clearly at different points in my past, I can see ways in which I acted that reflected certain insecurities or bad old habits from earlier in life.

Every time I see something like this about myself — some big changes and some tiny changes — I realize that the growth hasn’t happened in one big moment of change. It’s been constant improvement and new self-understanding which have led me to quietly discard things which aren’t consistent with the mature person I want to be.

But I don’t hate the old me. In fact, I have a lot of empathy for him. Seeing these small old behaviors which are now dead in me reinforce my understanding of where much of this came from. It reminds me of the pain which I had internalized from long ago — which I didn’t even know was there — and which came out in small but unhealthy ways.

I know I’m not finished growing. I’m sure the day will come when I’m mature enough to look back at things about me now and feel embarrassed at what I was. But I think that’s just fine.

I have empathy for where I came from, and that gives me compassion for myself for things which I didn’t know to be embarrassed about in the past.

I appreciate what I am now. I know I’m still a work in progress. I know I can be maddeningly stubborn and ridiculous and even childish at times. I know I get hurt too easily. (I even understand why.) I appreciate how far I’ve come.

Mostly, I appreciate where I’m going. I am grateful that I’m not what I was when I was 25 or 35 or even 10 years ago. I’m grateful that something has pushed me to keep growing and changing. I’m grateful to know that I’m a little closer — each year — to becoming the best version of myself that I can be.

It was just a tiny bit of childish behavior. I doubt she even remembers it. I don’t know whether anybody else ever saw it. But it’s a part of me which is dead — and it has taken its place among many other childish and dysfunctional behaviors which have also died in me.

Life is about growth. If we ever get stagnant, we start to die. So I’m grateful for the ability to change and grow, even if it sometimes embarrasses me to realize childish things I’ve done.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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