I've just gone out on a fabulous fate with a girl--now woman, who I knew while we were both growing-up. After the date she made a remark, something like: "You're still the same old Josh."
My initial feelings when I hear something like that is to think of it in terms of, "Just the same old you..." or something that is tainted with a negative connotation, however, the more that I think about that idea, the happier I am with myself. For example, the happier I am to realize that, 'Yes, I act the same way as I must have when I was 17-or-18-or-so' but I know that I am not a child now and I prefer to think of myself as not being immature, and so I'm left with the idea that, 'I must have been an extraordinarily mature 17-or-18-or-so year-old.'
Not that I am praising myself or even trying to boast as to my level of maturity (because I know that I still could mature in a lot of ways--at least 2 different ways! :), but am just happy to know that I've stayed constant in most ways over the years, AND I know that the accident that I was in and the coma that I was in didn't change me fundamentally...
But... I am still left with the metaphor that C. S. Lewis wrote of in The Weight of Glory:
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace."
I am pretty sure that the accident was one of the first of those "knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably" and I am better prepared now to give myself over to the other floors that need to be put on or the other towers that are run up.
JPS
Cool! I'm glad you had a fun date. However, I knew you when you were 17, 18 etc. . . and I'm not sure I'd use "mature" to describe you. I think it would have been boring if you were mature. Compared to our other friends, you may have been more reserved...but mature? A few words: Niagara, Handcuffs, Prelly, Abe Froman. I wouldn't change those days for anything.
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