Jashan T Personal Essay

Embarrassing memories. If someone was having a good day, all that is needed is one mortifying memory to surprise them and suddenly pull their smile a little down. Or, if one is engaging in a highly focused activity, like a game-defining moment in the middle of a sports match, a single memory can tuck some insecurity behind that person's ear, lowering their focus and causing them to miss their chance. An awkward conversation, a missed opportunity, or a humiliating moment in public. Embarrassing memories always carefully plan to appear when they are least wanted to tarnish the progress of someone attempting to improve as a person. 

In my case, the highest-stakes activity I would be interrupted in would likely be something along the lines of watching grass grow or staring at a wall if (I'm particularly busy that day). Unfortunately, when the memory hits, I have no choice but to pay my inexpensive attention to it. 

Just the other day, a memory struck that upset me surprisingly more than I had accounted for. It was about me playing with my hands, which was ironic since I spend a lot of my time doing that anyway. However, this was when my friends and I formulated games around playing with our hands in elementary school. We would substitute our hands for heroes, villains, and even currency systems. We would design "game levels" by arching our hands in tunnels or folding them in the form of stairs. Every day we would make a big scene in the middle of our lunch table, making obnoxious sound effects like substituting the footsteps of our hand characters with fart noises. These games sound like they were a highly unsustainable way to play, but we kept them up from second grade to halfway through sixth grade, where we eventually decided we were too mature.

In reality, our classmates had started calling us immature in the third grade, but we didn't get the memo. We were seen as the children among children, and I wonder why we kept up these childish games as long as we did. I wonder why we created an entire comic series revolving around the characters in our games. I wonder why we made a card game, a theatrical play, and even a collection of paper action figures off of them. 

In the second half of sixth and seventh grade, I liked to belittle all of those experiences as much as possible. My friends and I tried to distance ourselves from who we were a few months prior. We would try to adapt to the latest trends in school instead of building what we already had had for the past several years. We suddenly wanted to mix in with our peers that we didn't bother interacting with in the first half of sixth grade. 

All the while, I found myself becoming more confused and unhappy than I had ever been. 

   Today, I stepped back from the memory and realized that I wasn't upset from our hand games but because I tried to change myself so drastically in such a short amount of time.

Why are humans accustomed to changing how they act in favor of the general public perception? An embarrassing memory is often less about the person reminiscing about it but rather what the third person in the situation thought about them. In reality, an embarrassing memory only needs to be investigated lightly to conclude that that person in the past was not a worse version of themselves but was instead, like me, not bright enough at the moment to realize that others don't care that much. Eventually, I learned to balance what I wanted to do with what I had to do to adjust accordingly with my increasing age.

We are often trapped in our minds: realizing that not thinking at all sometimes is the best way to achieve peace and security.