I have a pet theory: [quote]The emotion of embarrassment has a half life.[/quote]
I’m a kind of self-reflective person, and when I look back at things I’ve done in the past, there are some of them that make me retroactively cringe and/or actually blush at what colossal idiocy I enacted at those times.
But as I get older, I find that I can forgive myself in proportion to how long ago the episode occurred, and that proportion is about half of my lifespan (so far).
In my 20s, the things I did as a preteen had rolled off the back end of the mortification scale, but the especially stupid things I did as a teen still really bothered me.
By my mid to late 30s, my teen self was enjoying the benefit of forgiveness, but my 20 something self was still being raked over the coals of post facto shaming.
I’m about done forgiving myself the foibles of my 20s, and in another half decade or so I’ll be able to smile indulgently at some of the memories of my early 30s.
Etc.
I think there’s a cultural timing thing at work in the focus of this post.
The 90s were not “much, much worse than the 1970s” but the 70’s are now far enough in the past that we can accept the dated, embarrassing things we did then; time has dulled the edge of shame.
