« There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about yourself. Your connection to your former life is like a dream or delirium, and that person who you once were is merely a fond acquaintance, or a beloved character from a storybook. This is how memory becomes nostalgia. They are two very different things—the same way that a person is different from a photograph of a person. »
Stay Awake, by Dan Chaon.
Interesting observation. Do you think it’s true?
@Beth: It’s very true for me. I was telling Ed a story about something that had happened while I lived in California and it felt like a story I had heard second hand. Even my childhood sometimes feels like another life lived by another person… I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like when I’m 80 (if I make it that far, of course)!