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[ 8 minute read ]

You make me want to be a better person

Because we cannot hear what our voices sound like to others we are surprised to hear it when we first hear a recording of our own voice. Similarly, I once heard that if we met ourselves in the street we would always thereafter cross the road whenever we saw ourselves to avoid another meeting; such is the distaste we would have at our own selves. In other words, we would not want to be friends with ourselves.

The man in his fifties

      'What, you don't need me anymore?', said the man in his fifties to me as he came down the library stairs. This man did not seem to be offended nor surprised, merely bemused. I suspected he was not significant in improving my day, and he seemed to be wondering what he would do before he finally disassembled after gradually fading, if I continued to ignore him. At least, that is what I was wondering.

I ignored this familiar, though not recognised man. I had no idea who he was, simply because I had never seen myself before without prejudice, and never heard my own voice coming from outside my own head, without the resonances in my mouth and nasal passages acting as feedback.

At the time I didn’t realise that I had imagined and created him to guard me and warn me of impending danger, which he had so far done exceedingly well, though not in a language that I understood, more as an uncomfortable feeling, of concern in a particular direction. I knew that it had been useful, really useful, to be somehow connected to someone unbiased and disconnected from the world by a slight phase shift; a delay of a few milliseconds. I had also used him as a counselor, or just someone to act as devil’s advocate; a sounding board, if you will; this was, after all, someone I had never met in the real world, would never be punitively accountable to, or ever expect him to tell my secrets. But at this time of first meeting a visible, seemingly solid, manifestation I was still clueless.

Later, when I was talking to an elderly lady, the man in his fifties came back, talking nonsense, well, almost nonsense; certainly interjecting himself in a boorish manner. He seemed to be someone else's idea of confident and open, and desperately, though dismally, trying to demonstrate some kind of learnedness that encompassed the current situation and everything in it.

Disgusted, I walked away and left him to it - not wanting to become engaged in any kind of difficult dialogue with him. I felt sorry for the elderly woman, leaving her talking to, what was really just obfuscation of her slight problem with a shopping trolley; a bit like inclement weather. I didn't know it was myself she was talking to, me just a few days, weeks, years ago, but now projected as a probable future outcome. It was that same person, me in the past and recent present, compressed into a single moment. I had, in fact, two decades ago as a teenager, created a manifestation to fill the gap in my own emotional mis-education. No wonder no-one liked me now if I was going to be like that.

During the next few days a few people, strangers I met, looked at me a bit too long as though they recognised me, or  puzzled as though I had sworn out loud for no reason, or saw a change in me. How could they? They had never met me. No, but it soon became apparent they had met the man in his fifties. To be fair, they hadn't actually met the man in his fifties. Instead, their own being, imagined, created or organically existing, inside of these strangers, who in their cases happened to be the same age as themselves, had met the man in his fifties; this being my future self if I did not change my ways. They knew each other, and on days off had sometimes met and wildly pontificated their theories on everything; they were, after all, not bound by a fear of failure and consequently were supremely confident.

Later that day, I met the elderly woman again. The wheel on her stolen shopping trolley was still about to fall off, much like it had been ‘borrowed’ in the 1990s and had never been properly maintained up to today. That in itself was strange, but that she looked like how my wife might look in forty years was overwhelmingly disturbing.

       ‘Who was that awful man?’ she asked. I had a strange feeling then that I was not going to remain married. This fleeting feeling of deja vu and prescience broke the veil of incomprehension. I understood in a small way who the man in his fifties might be.

Hakim, my outrageously handsome childhood friend met me at the bar in the pub that evening. He was much more sanguine about how my day had played out. When I say handsome, I mean that I try not be seen with him in public because, although my features are plain, in comparison with his, I would be arrested for being in possession of an offensive face. My only advantage was that being slightly taller than average height I towered over his diminutive one metre fifty stature.

We stayed sitting at the bar, our usual place. ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing’, he said, ‘I have had whole conversations with animals about re-incarnation.’ He climbed down from his stool and flambuoyantly limped over to the docile dog in the corner.

      ‘Jean-Paul', he said, ‘When will you give me that ten Francs you borrowed from me twenty years ago in Paris?’ Hakim has a sense of humour that makes it difficult for me to know when he is joking or just crazy.

While Hakim was in the toilet, the man in his fifties came in, stood briefly at the bar, then took a stool there, two stools away, waiting to be served. My heart sank. It plummeted into depths of despair when Hakim walked jauntily back in without his limp and climbed his stool again. Please don’t talk to him, Hakim, I prayed.

‘Long time no see, Martin! Have a beer?’ My name is Martin but Hakim was not looking at me. I was beginning to realise that Hakim might actually have whole conversations with dogs, and why he is supremely confident; he could see my older self, just as I could. For the first time, I regretted reading that book. ‘Mind Games’, when I was fourteen, and particularly the chapter titled. ‘How to manifest a being’. A kaleidoscope of jigsaw pieces fell into place as developing thoughts in my mind. Most of these I knew to be only suppositions, such as virgins have a greater ability to manifest in the spirit world, like Oracles in ancient civilisations. I had manifested ‘Martin’, my avatar, before I had scratched the itch of carnal desire with someone else. ‘Martin’ was consequently, not a temporary being.

Alarmingly, it seemed that my manifestation now had agency over itself. I suspected that Hakim already knew this. I knew that I would not shake ‘Martin’ off, as me in thirty years time, without help. I looked hopefully at Hakim, who ignored me.

       ‘Get Martin whatever he is drinking, please.’ he said to the barman, gesturing to the man in his fifties.

Oh no! I thought, This is the being that guided me, without tripping, through a completely dark wood, after I fell in a ditch. I didn’t like this manifestation but I should.

- end -

Are these the persons who precede us? 

Realistically, I think first impressions in the real world do count, yet not necessarily in the ways that many people postulate. We can tell if someone is fit by the way they walk. We can tell if someone is polite or merely aware of social protocols. I am fairly certain that it is how we perceive ourselves that causes us to shape ourselves to a reasonable conformity of our expectations. I slouch, not so much because I am tall, but because I am jaded. I make mock gestures of tipping my hat to strangers to let them know I have a sense of humour and a recognition of manners past, because I feel isolated. There are a myriad of tiny things I do which I do not recognise because I have not met myself and can’t see them. If I met myself coming down the street, I would see a man tipping an invisible hat and jauntily and happily moaning about his perception of the world. I would cross the road to avoid myself. The little story is about how awkward I would feel if I had to introduce my embarrassing invisible friend (me) to my other friends, as someone I love and respect. Strangely, this invisible friend is someone my friends and family have already met.

‘Old Martin, You make me want to be a better person.’