I have a photograph of myself when I was 2 years of age, and I don't recognize the person in the photograph. She doesn't look anything like me, and I can't find any trace of her in me physically. And yet I remember her very, very well - even her anxiety.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the disconnect between past and present selves, highlighting how our identities evolve over time.
Jamaica Kincaid's quote emphasizes the idea that our past selves can feel like strangers to us, despite our memories of them. The reference to a photograph serves as a metaphor for how we change physically, emotionally, and psychologically, prompting reflection on the continuity of self and the impact of past experiences on our present identities.
In practice
During a personal development workshop focusing on identity and growth.
Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.
Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.
I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.
I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.
I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.
I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.
How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness - by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.
Your true character Is most accurately measured by how you treat those who can do 'Nothing' for you
Night falls fast. Today is in the past.
The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.
If our principal treasure be as we profess, in things spiritual and heavenly, and woe unto us if it be not so! on them will our affections, and consequently our desires and thoughts, be principally fixed.
There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.
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