Here is what’s been on my mind lately.
When I contact people who have not spoken to me in a while – like my Westfield colleague Dez Blanchfield – I wonder whether they still think of me as the person they used to know.
Back then, while I wasn’t a psychopath, I was…..let’s just say, intense. So I wonder if that’s what they still remember me as, and expect me to be the same.
But then, these three thoughts give me solace.
1. I know that luckily, no one spends that much time thinking about me – or indeed about other people. Everyone is busy thinking about themselves – what they’ll have for lunch and how to take that comment their manager made to them and their kid needs braces and the dog needs surgery. So I feature nowhere in their minds. If they do think of me, I might take up microseconds before their thoughts go back to their arthritic dog. And I’m cool with that – because that works in my favour.
2. Just like I have grown and changed, so have all of the people who have known me. So while they might remember me as being intense way back when they knew me, their older, wiser selves might judge my former self less critically.
3. As I have grown older, and I know, wiser, I have become more forgiving. Of myself, but especially of others. I believe that everyone thinks this way – as they too, have grown older. This charitable mindset makes it easier for me to forget the petty grievances I once nurtured – and so I receive people as I see them in that moment.
So while I might indulge in the odd flight of fancy wondering what people might remember about me, I take solace in knowing that at least I wasn’t a psychopath – so whatever they remember, it can’t be all that bad.