past, present, future.

Have you ever seen someone/something that has reminded you of who you used to be, what you used to do, and how you used to think about things? I've been running into a lot of people I used to think a lot about, but don't anymore.
Weird.
Anyway, whenever I see people I haven't talked to in a while, or at all in some cases, I think about what was going on in my life at that time and things. The last 2 years have been crazy to put it lightly. I'd like to think I've changed a lot. I think for the better. I realize that a lot of who I was before now was just pretense. Layers and layers of "what do people think of me?" "am I good enough?" "did I do that right?" "should I have done that?" ect...the list is infinite in its depth and triviality. I think I've become a lot more raw, maliable, real.
I don't want to be the boy who runs away to the things that comfort him whenever things get hard; who makes mistakes whenever he can't make sense of things; who hurts people because he would rather have them angry than indifferent.
I want to be the man who can say, "Life is rough right now, and even though I cannot see it, God is good and working!" or "I feel tempted to do (fill in the blank with any type of vice, selfishnesss, or malice) but the Lord Jesus Christ is true so the thing I am tempted to do must be false." or even "I AM NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. OTHER PEOPLE ARE THREE DIMENTIONAL AND I REFUSE TO NARROW THEM DOWN TO A LEVEL SUFFICIENT FOR MY OWN UNDERSTANDING!" God knows people more deeply than I could ever hope to know them. His word is trustworthy, so I need to follow it. It reveals the truth about men. How could I have been so blind to this for so long? (Everything in Your timing I know) It just seems so obvious now. The love of God and the love of neighbor are the central concerns of man. Anything else is pretense and coating over the image of God in man with the image of man in man, or in other words, anything else is man assuming man is the origin of all things and refuses to see God as the origin of all things. This may not sound like to big of a deal, but it changes EVERYTHING. When we see our selves as the origin, we also see ourselves as the middle of all existance. Everything, including other people, becomes about ourselves.