“When you look at your past self, what do you see?”
The other day, I was helping my Dad in the basement of the house where I grew up.
We were moving a set of boxes, and I noticed a drawing on the ping pong table.
“What’s that?” I asked internally.
I carefully set down the boxes and turned toward the ping pong table.
It was a drawing of a pug that I made when I was in 6th grade.
My initial reaction, I couldn’t help but smile when I first saw it.
It took me down a memory lane of all of the times when I would lay on the floor of the living room and draw for hours upon hours.
As I picked up the stack of papers, I also noticed there were other drawings along with a collage that I made around the same time.
If I remember correctly, I believe it was a school assignment where I had to make a collage of how I saw our family.
If you had to make a collage answering, “how do you see your family?”, what would be on it?
As I looked at it more closely, I noticed I saw what appeared to be my “brother” with his face stuffed full of pizza, my parents in the top left corner smiling, an F-150 with a sack of money in the back with an aspiration written under it, “I want to be a race car driver”, and underneath it all a set of hobbies including playing basketball with my brother, watching football and playing my game boy.
I smiled, one of pure joy, as I put the collage back down on the ping pong table.
Even though I may be a different person today with a different perspective of family and life, at the core I believe some things remained the same.
I still find joy in watching football every Saturday and Sunday.
I would still like to pick a game boy and play “FIFA 08”.
When I look at my past today, especially this collage, I see a direct reflection of a kid who stayed curious about life and saw people in their best possible light.
When you look at your post self, what do you see?
