Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

Patrick O'Brian, author of the Master and Commander series, is one of my very favorite writers, and I often ruminate on little passages from his works. One of the little interludes that's been on my mind today has to do with a moment in the first novel in the series, when Jack (the captain) and Stephen (his best friend) are talking about identity:

'Identity?' said Jack, comfortably pouring out more coffee. 'Is not identity something you are born with?'

'The identity I am thinking of is something that hovers between a man and the rest of the world: a mid-point between his view of himself and theirs of him - for each, of course, affects the other continually. A reciprocal fluxion, sir. There is nothing absolute about this identity of mine. Were you, you personally, to spend some days in Spain at present you would find yours change, you know, because of the general opinion there that you are a false harsh brutal murdering villain, an odious man.'

'I dare say they are vexed,' said Jack, smiling. 'And I dare say they call me Beelzebub. But that don't make me Beelzebub.'

'Does it not? Does it not? Ah?' (O'Brian, 278).


I recently joined Facebook, apparently the last person in my generation to make this effort. It's been nice to hear from old friends, many of whom I haven't seen or spoken to since we graduated high school. But at the same time, the foray into Facebook has taken me back to a different point in my life, and I'm not 100% happy about it--not by a long chalk, as Jack would say.

I feel that I'm a very different person than I was when I graduated high school. Shouldn't I be? I mean, I've lived almost half my life since graduating. The post-high school Amy is the one who got married, crafted an academic career (of sorts), had children, built a house, joined a completely different denomination, etc. But therein lies the rub.

If who we are is, as Stephen suggests, partly dependent on how other people see us, the people who knew me back then (and don't really know me now) are only ever going to remember me the way I was. And that person isn't/wasn't so great. She was hyper-competitive, pretty immature, suffering from a massive inferiority complex. (Who else goes to grad school for English, except people with these kinds of problems, I ask you?) I'm not altogether different now, but I'm different enough to not want to go back there. Worse, looking at the profiles of people I knew back then (people I liked and respected, mind you) is bringing up a lot of negative feelings--I feel that I haven't achieved enough, don't have a good enough job, haven't maxed out whatever potential I might have had. Virtual contact (VIRTUAL contact, for pete's sake!) with old acquaintance is turning me back into precisely the same kind of competitive lunatic I have tried for years to stop being.

So maybe auld acquaintance SHOULD be forgot and never brought to mind. Perhaps the best thing I can do for myself in the new year is to cancel the Facebook account and live in the now, as opposed to the days of auld lange syne. As the song says,


We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne...

The water is wide indeed. Perhaps it is so wide that I shouldn't care whether people thinking I'm Beelzebub makes me Beelzebub. But I'm not sure I can stop caring, whether I should or not...