He stared at it for a long time.

There before him, his likeness stood frozen for all eternity in a pose that indicated a pinnacle moment, but one he could scarcely remember. It was obviously a clear enough moment for the one who posted it and important enough to them to make them raise it of from the deep-sea of all things past and forgotten to shine under the new light of the modern future.

Was that even him, he wondered.

He didn’t feel he looked like that anymore. He probably didn’t think like that anymore and if he did, he hoped his thinking, and his behavior was a bit more refined.

And what was his obligation to this resurgence of the past? Did he need to explain it? Embrace it? Support it? Deny it? Was there a need to defend this person and these actions – whatever they were? Or was the better choice to ignore it as if it had never come up. Was it really so big a deal as even this amount of consideration?

Still here stared.

That younger face was foreign to him. Those settings, that time seemed connected to him, sort of, but by a very, very thin thread, and so distant that it might have been easy to deny that was him and to make a strong case in support of that. A doppelganger perhaps.
He spent a long time looking at the face, the eyes. Where did that boy go?

Was he a better person now? Did he do enough of the right things between that time and now? And when the current version of himself is forced to recall this time, will he be able to look back on this time and think well of the time that passed? Did he progress? Did he grow? Did he take care of his people? Did he learn enough and do enough to be well prepared to leave the world a tiny bit better than he found it?