Finish The Sentence Friday the Wakefield Doctrine ( Peter Pan complex? don’t be such a child! …of aging and getting old”) | the Wakefield Doctrine Finish The Sentence Friday the Wakefield Doctrine ( Peter Pan complex? don’t be such a child! …of aging and getting old”) | the Wakefield Doctrine

Finish The Sentence Friday the Wakefield Doctrine ( Peter Pan complex? don’t be such a child! …of aging and getting old”)

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

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From the beguiling, yet insidiously insightful question trove of the 4 bloggerini… Janine (“...would you like to see my etchings?“) and Kate (“no, really it’s true! here, wait! I’ll show you!”) and Stephanie (“…most people don’t understand, you seem like you do.”) and Kristi ( “…yes! no, it’s going to be like nothing you would have thought“) here is this week’s mirror of the soul:

Once, in public, I saw somebody…

…who was, as it turns out, not me!

… one morning, back in the 1990s, I found myself on a sidewalk in the middle of the commercial section of a small town in New England. I can’t recall the reason for being in this part of this particular town at that particular moment, but there I was walking along the sidewalk, past an Emporium India shop, approaching a curio/gift shop ( the sign read, ‘gifts small and dear‘). Not only did I have the sidewalk to myself, there was virtually no cars or trucks on the street, which actually was named, Main Street. As I walked past a small consignment store on my right, from the corner of my eye, I caught the reflection of my side  of the street in a plate-glass shop window on the opposite side of the street. I saw a man walking along the sidewalk and I didn’t recognize him.

The time that elapsed, between my observing the reflection in the storefront window and ‘recognizing’ myself was just long enough for the question to form in my mind, ‘well, Clark who were you expecting to see?’

I am grateful for that ‘pause’ and especially (for) that question, because it lead me to realize that I have, somewhere deep in my mind, a set physical image of myself. Not so much a picture as a ‘oh yeah, that’s me‘ and it it was this set image that did not correspond to what I saw in the plate-glass window. Being the clark that I am, I was able to hold off on returning to the real world, I did not do what the majority might do, which would be to laugh and discount the experience as being ‘the sun in my eyes’ or (perhaps) an imperfection in the plate-glass. No, I was off to try to learn just who I was expecting to see in the reflection and, near as I can determine, I was expecting a man in his late 20s in the ‘mirror’ across the street that morning. Now I should say, this ‘expecting to see in the mirror…’ this is not looking in the mirror and wondering who it is facing back to me, this is more like how you can run up a flight of stairs without needing to look at my feet, it is like playing an instrument or lifting a child in the air without having to think about how much they weigh. We’re talking about a pretty close to unconscious assumption about my physical appearance. You might say that it’s a baseline conception of my own physical self. (Well, you might if you are a clark, lol)

Since that moment in October years ago, I have discussed this concept with people, people who I judge have that… joy in the challenge of the odd and unusual, the curiosity-philic sort of people who I find coming to this here blog here, and once they get the idea of the ‘baseline’ image, the conversation gets even more interesting. There seems to be no one stage of life for this self-image lock in to occur, it varies a lot among the people I have talked to, centering on the late 20s and 30s, but there is always a ‘lock in age’

Maybe this is why, for many of us, we never feel like our parents.

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clarkscottroger About clarkscottroger
Well, what exactly do you want to know? Whether I am a clark or a scott or roger? If you have to ask, then you need to keep reading the Posts for two reasons: a)to get a clear enough understanding to be able to make the determination of which type I am and 2) to realize that by definition I am all three.* *which is true for you as well, all three...but mostly one

Comments

  1. Wow, Clark, I will say at 36 years old, I am so wanting to lock up time and not have it move forward too fast anymore. When I was younger I was always wishing time away and not really just wanting to live in the moment and you are right I think when we do look at ourselves in the mirror, we want to see that younger side of ourselves still staring back, but I say it is inevitable that will not always be the case. Thanks for making me think a bit this morning and linking up with us again! :

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Janine

      The process of ‘seeing’ what you believe you look like is tricky… it is not just ‘picturing yourself’, it is not really even putting yourself in the mirror…(even trickier than that!)… it’s something akin to day dreaming and as you imagining whatever, doing what ever, you, ever so quietly and subtlety pull the camera back so that you are in the scene in your mind’s eye. For reasons that I will withhold in my predictabily coy way, I will say…do not expect your lock in age to be excessively different from your current chronological age… but still a somewhat younger version of your 36 year old self.
      Let us know how you make out!

  2. Karen says:

    wow….what a thought provoking post. While I am looking forward to turn 40 in two years (feel fourty is an accomplishemnt) I also don’t want my parents or son to age…time moves forward for us all and it is scary to think that one day my son will be a parent with kids of his own.

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Karen

      This being the Wakefield Doctrine…), it gets even more interesting when you start to notice the pattern as to when the self image stops aging (that’s a hint right there!). You will be the person that you are, the person that forms the physical context for that person (or at very least, the self image) is what stops showing the effects and toll of age.

  3. joellewisler says:

    I totally get this. I still seemed to be surprised that I’m not 16, unfortunately.

  4. Zoe says:

    so I haven’t read the other comments yet and I will in a moment. I mention that because this is really reminiscent of something that I’ve been exploring for years which is the idea of how old are you in your head compared to how chronologically old you are. A few hours before my father died we were having a discussion. He knew he was dying but he was cognizant right up until the end quite lucid really. And I asked him” hey dad, you know how you’re a different age in your head than you really are? How old are you in your head?” this is a man who was actively dying at that moment he really couldn’t have been feeling very well. Chronologically he was 79. he
    answered me “” you know I think I’m 46.”

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      zoe
      you do, in fact, get what I am attempting to convey here…I trust there is a some really cool language to account for the persistent body/self-image that resists the passage of time.

      when I get back in later in the day, I will offer my own opinion as to the ‘why’ of this process…or I may wait for a live conversation, my thinking is subject to my total fondness for hyperbole and ‘words-of-fun’, so I suspect written ‘splanation might be lacking

  5. Personally, I’m a mess. Having back and knee issues from a car accident back in the 80s, I sometimes feel like I’m 70, but in my head, I’m still hovering somewhere around 26 – not as scattered as someone younger might be, but not quite settled yet as someone older might be. Physically, I must be kidding myself, because I’m always way off base when trying to guess the ages of those around me – I often assume people to be my age who are actually several years younger. I was horrified to learn that Gordon Ramsay is the same age as me and seriously hope I don’t look that old to others. The jury is still out on that or whether I’ve been using the Evil Queen’s mirror. ;)

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Chris

      or… someone snuck in your house and left you a mirror from the Dorian Gray Home Fashions Line (now available at Sears!)

  6. findingninee says:

    Wow. This just may be my favorite post of yours ever. I am continually shocked when I see my wrinkles. Like seriously surprised, wondering, when, exactly they came. It’s so weird that we lock in an image of ourselves at a certain age. For me, I think it’s early 30’s. Wow. Just wow. Seriously great post, Clark.

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Kristi

      wait til you hear what (I believe) the ‘reason’ is…lol

      • findingninee says:

        Fill me in. Please?

        • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

          has to do with all that we (as individuals) expect* from Life

          *this is the tricky part…the parts of our conception of, expectations for are not necessarily limited to the things that we are aware (or even approve of)

  7. I don’t think I’ve ‘locked on’ yet.

    But sometimes (bear with me) I do stare into the mirror at the girl there, and wonder what her life’s like – what she does and thinks and feels in that mirror land where everything is the same, but slightly brighter, slightly backwards and off kilter. I wonder who she knows, how her life turned out, and whether she has any insights.

    Yet when I come to meet her, she just stares, quite impassively, and lets nothing slip…

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      Lizzi

      that will be interesting, as I have not yet encountered a person (of an age) to have not yet reached their lock-in age

      remember what we say at the Doctrine! ‘take notes!’

  8. I not only have a ‘lock’ age for myself (late 30’s, and you can imagine my confusion every morning when I see that I have actually NOT stopped the clock) but for others as well. For instance, my mother will forever be about 40. She is actually 82 and I’m pissed about that, sometimes even shocked. I fell like the people I love the most should be able to stop time. Talk about stubborn!! Old Man Time is laughing his ass off.