Time doesn’t stand still; therefore none of us are the same people we once were. We have sufficiently grown wiser throughout life, starting from the day we spoke our first words, to as recent as the end of last semester. Whenever something unpleasant happens in life, you may wish to go back and stop the occurrence from happening and never have to experience the indescribable anguish. But would you ever wonder how such revisitation would effect you in the future? If you had never touched that scorching hot skillet as a child, how would you have experienced the pain of being burned and learned from it?  If that narcissistic douchebag  ex-boyfriend had never dumped you your senior year of high school, how would you have later met the person who really taught you what it meant to be in a meaningful relationship? Since we are humans who are susceptible to making mistakes, the most we can do is learn from them and construct ourselves into better individuals. Wisdom comes with the passage of time, but only to those who are willing to learn from their mistakes.

In the image, Present Amber (the only one in color) is sitting as if she were looking out a window and watching all of her old stories play out from afar. She anxiously wants to warn them about some of the impending tribulations that they are about to undergo and what they could do to prepare for such struggles. However, she is aware that if she does tell them, she herself will never be the same. All of the experiences she’d undergone, good and bad, would never had happened to her, and she would be as naïve as her infant self. After that point, she may as well not exist anymore because she isn’t the person she once was (represented by her fading away.)

This image was made for the 9 Lives visual assignment. I made this image in GIMP by cutting out photos of myself from different time periods, the one in color being the most recent. Rather than leaving all of the past photos separated, I decided to integrate them into 1 moment in time. I borrowed the park image to provide a place for the Ambers to take a group photo.

Park Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/938158

Park Image License: http://www.sxc.hu/txt/license.html