Things About Getting Older

It's O-Week in the campuses of Melbourne and, I presume, around the country. This marks the ten year anniversary of my big coming-of-age move to the city.

I have a circle of friends I made at uni and, like many social groups from uni, its a funny one. I caught up with this group at a party last night and, as is increadibly apt for a Tin/Aluminium Anniversary, I learned some amazing facts about what I remember.

I learned that someone who I thought had disliked me had actually sought out my approval. I thought this was the first person who disliked me, not becuase they were mean or mislead or becuase of something I'd done, but for who I was. I thought they disliked me for all the things I was acutally proud of: my nonconsumerism, my lack of dieting or calorie counting, my leftie leanings and my general lack of spending money on appearances. And it turns out, after all this time, that when *I heard* them judging my actions and choices with disapproval they may actually have, in a slightly misleading way, been showing they cared by offering advice. (Granted it was advice that was often way off the mark for me: We were Very different poeple.)

At the time, being young and (from what I recall) still trying to prove I was a formidable intellect, well, I remember being aloof and indifferent and 'confident' and I suspect that I may have been rude. In fact, I suspect that I may now cringe if I were told what I said back then. At last night's party I learned that, as clearly needy as that person could be, maybe I should've given a little more than I let on; maybe I should've been more responsible with my knowledge that this person craved validation. I think there were times I could have been a better person.

I know now that, since then and in a measurable time in the past, I have tried to remember to behave in a way that I would be happy with in hindsight, ideally integrity. And I know that this sort of revelation has happened to poeple in blogland time and time again. So there's my version of it.