changing your mind

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a few examples:

pretentious kid that i was i read julian barnes' history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters soon after it came out and thought it the best thing ever. then i didn't read it for years, but remembered that it was great so told people so. then a friend of mine happened to read it and point out that it was crap, so i reread it and found to my horror that it was, and that my favourite bit (that parenthesis chapter, and in particular the line about how we have to believe in love or we're lost) was now the bit i liked least. 3 years on i suspect that if i reread it again i'd be somewhere inbetween.

similar things have happened to me with books often enough that i now pretty much assume that any book i enjoyed in my teens is crap; eg i dismissed gunter grass as "the kind of thing you like when you're 16" the other day, which is quite possibly factually accurate but hardly helpful.

these things happen on a much shorter term, too; my critical judgements often seem to sway wildly within 6 month periods (this happened several times in both directions with ian mcewan for example). what intrigues me is how much this is to do with being overenthusiastic about things on first encountering them (although there are definitely things that i've disliked and then realised i was wrong about), and how much it is to do with being reasonably young and having evolving tastes. i mean, i presume this happens less with age; i'd definitely like to be able to rely on my judgements of 6 months ago still being reasonable.

(clothes are another good example: one week i'll think that wearing a sarong around town = a great idea, the next i'll cringe at the memory etc etc).

i'm sure there's a good question in here, but i can't seem to write it down. do you you change your mind about critical judgements? do you do it less as you get older? do you trust opinions that you formed 6 months, a year, 5 years ago? etc.

― toby, Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

In five years time you'll come back and formulate a proper question about this.

But yes, I change my mind all the time.

― Pete, Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

changing your mind is way common, but there's something a bit awful about rejecting the stuff from your teen years which, i think, is also a pretty universal thing. maybe it's a fear that i will drift into the kind of person i would have hated as a kid. also, one of the reasons i have turned my back on much of the stuff from my youthhood is that i know its effect on me and am mainly rejecting that. vonnegut leaps to mind; i suppose a fine author but i don't think i can ever again read a line he's written for fear of cringing myself into oblivion.

― dave k, Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What I realised recently was that I hardly ever end up changing my mind about things I like. There are very very few records/bands that I once liked and am now embarrassed about or can now only enjoy in a kitsch way, even going back to when I was a kid. I think this probably refers to books too, but I don't often reread them, so I can't be sure. I like to think that this is because I have unerringly accurate critical judgment but it's probably more to do with problems I have with the idea of 'growing wiser' or letting the past go generally.

I'm not so bad the other way around. There are things that I never used to appreciate that I'm now OK with now.

― N., Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

They mutate as they go -- some stances change, some don't -- but I like Nick's point about yer tastes expanding, which I think is the truest model. Meanwhile, stuff from your past can be appreciated without having to be reencountered or particularly excited about.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am constantly reformulating my opinions based on experience. And no, just cause you're older doesn't mean you are smarter in that "I told you so" way that parents use. I find as I get older, I trust my instincts more. I am less opinionated as now I know I have to listen to every side, then decide. Only books I truly still like that I read in high school - J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit', and Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'. Lots of meaning now in Atlas Shrugged that I couldn't relate to when I was young. Most of the things I would have died for at 18, I could have cared less about at 25. Life changes you - experience will change you - and either you'll adapt - i.e. computers, or die - manual Typewriters. Life's a pretty damn good teacher - lot's of stuff that you will never learn in college, or high school will get thrown at you from Life 101. Every single person you meet will teach you something - might not be alot. Might only learn that a person is "not the brightest crayon in the box", but you could learn a new idea that you absolutely never envisioned. Even the lowest of the low teach you. And by that interaction, you will change your opinions and have new ones. And the opinions that matter, might get modified in some way. I find that is the way I learned what is important, what is not important, and what is constant. I know I am still learning as I go along. And damn, I still make an occasional mistake or two..just hope it's not the SAME mistake I made before. :>)

― sidepasser, Sunday, 17 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Cf. josh blog.

― Josh, Sunday, 17 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, of course moving on and changing your mind are natural parts of growing. Everyone must do it to some extent, otherwise you are never really learning anything I think. Especially with things I write, I look back at them later and find them lamentably awful.

I think, though, that you do reach a stage where you have formulated your views on general things coherently enough to stick with them for good. It could get tiring otherwise.

― Ally C, Sunday, 17 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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