Saturday, August 23, 2014

WHO AM I?





“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being.”

Solzhenitsyn:  The Gulag Archipelago

 
Only my wife hasn't changed.
She is still the beautiful young woman I married. 

I am not a vain person.   I rarely study myself in a mirror.   My hair is curly so I never comb it – I just wet my hands and run them through my hair when I splash water in my face each morning after I wake up.  I never trim my beard or get a haircut until my wife complains that I am starting to look shaggy.  The few times I do look in a mirror I see a stranger looking back.

It has occurred to me that I am a totally different person – an incarnation of who I once was.  I have the same DNA of that earlier person, but there the likeness ends.   I do not look the same: my hair is silver, my ears are larger, my facial features are different, I am less physically fit.   The difference doesn’t end there: I have totally different values, different goals, different priorities, different likes and dislikes, and I am smarter than that younger person. 

I am in no way like my younger incarnation. 

 the Ol'Buzzard


6 comments:

  1. You and your wife are an attractive couple! Sounds like you aged well.

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  2. Ditto here, as well. As far as I can tell, I am in my fifth me...child, teen, twenties fool, middle-earth and currently, wrinkled, sagging but content and seasoned turdy. Since I gave up the beard back there in middle-earth, I shave...daily...which requires a mirror...which tells no lies.

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  3. I tried to grow a beard once...I'm not sure, but that's when my leprechaun dna starts to exhibit itself. I have had a goatee type thing for years, it's actually my Frank Zappa memorial goatee...I grew it when he died...it has gone from dark to white. The biggest regret I have in this incarnation is going bald..I earned every line and wrinkle the hard way!

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  4. your wife is so pretty, and you look pretty damn good your ownself..

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  5. You guys are so cute!
    I just started on a new version within the last couple of months I think but I really don't know who or what this one is about so much but I have noticed she is kinder but remains just as quick to anger. At the same time, she no longer has the energy to hold onto that anger. :)

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COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."