PONDERINGS ON PERCEPTIONS...

Or: The things that make up our lives...

I was having a little think earlier through the week.  Big thinks tire me out, so little thinks are easier on my mind, I find, and are much more manageable.  I was thinking about how our lives, or perceptions of them at any point - are so inextricably linked to lots of variable factors that surround us at the time.  For example, your perception of a certain time or place in your life is influenced by the comics you read, the TV shows you watched, the friends you hung around with, where you worked, etc.  

Yeah, granted, I'm stating the obvious, but the thing about the obvious is that we don't always pay attention to it.  It's right in front of us, so we tend to look past it while trying to see the wider picture.  The things that influence your perception of a place - a house or neighbourhood for example - alter over time, and as those things change, so, gradually, might your perception of it.

Should you then move from one domicile to another before your perception changes, and are still watching the same TV shows, buying the same comics, and still have the same furniture as in your previous home, then a sense of continuity and consistency in terms of mood, ambiance, perception, exists from one house to the next.  (It'd probably be different if you emigrated to another country, but I'm talking about more local flits.)

However, as time passes, new TV shows come and old ones go (and the same for comics and furniture) and the 'timbre' (figuratively speaking) of your home, hearth - and, indeed, life - gradually changes, and becomes different to what it had been, taking on almost another 'personality' that may not always be an improvement on the original (though sometimes it might be).  It's then that dissatisfaction may creep in, as your home and neighbourhood no longer supplies the sense of the familiar that you were once so comfortable with.

Sure, these days you can still watch repeats of all the classic TV shows (on Freeview channels) that you watched in your youth, but you're now aware that they really belong in a different 'universe' (the past) which you can tap into every so often if you wish, but are no longer contemporaneous, current, new, now, in the way that they were when you were growing up with them.  Once you reach a certain age, a partition seems to come down and separate you from your past, whereas, up to that point, that partition was imperceptible and always open - if, in fact, it even existed.

As most regular readers will know, after living in my current house for 11 years, my family moved to another neighbourhood, then moved back to our former house four years later.  At first everything was pretty much the same, but gradually things started to change, affecting the 'mood' of the place.  Neighbours flitted, extensions were built (on other houses, not mine), lampposts, pavements, and street signs were replaced, green areas in front of houses were turned into car parking spaces, buildings on the horizon were demolished and replaced, as well as other changes, like local shops disappearing.

So now the 'ambience' of the place is different to what it used to be, and I find myself yearning for how things were when we first flitted here back in 1972.  That'll never happen of course, but sometimes I lie on top of my bed in the room that was mine when I was yet 13 (and a half), with a book or comic that I owned back then (or a replacement) and pretend that everything outside the closed curtains of my bedroom window is still the same as when I was much younger.  It's my way of trying to re-create the 'perception' I had of the house and area when we first moved here.

It's an illusion of course (some might say a delusion), and one which I can't sustain for any great length of time, but perhaps the more I exercise the fantasy, the easier (and stronger) it will get.  Any Crivvies do anything similar in their quest to relive the 'atmosphere' of pleasant moments from the past?  Or did you let it escape years ago and never bother to try and recapture it?  The comments section awaits your input - if you're interested.