You Aren't Your Past Self

Have you ever seen a situation that was really screwed up, but due to the circumstances, it was hilarious? Like imagine your friend dropping a wedding cake in the middle of saying that he wasn't going to drop it. Hilarious, but wrong. 

In these situations, everybody thinks it's funny except your friend that experienced it. And invariably, one person says "it's only funny because it didn't happen to me" and another person will say "this is the kind of thing you will look back on and laugh at."

When paired together, they make a curious thought. Maybe, the reason that a negative experience is only funny when a lot of time has passed is that you are a different person by then. In that case, you would be looking at your past self the way you would look at a stranger. And when enough new experiences have come your way, your past self will truly be as estranged and ignorant as a general stranger and deserves to be treated as such. 

This, of course, flies in the face of "common sense", but that is of little consequence. What matters is managing the idea that we are actually not the same people were, and how drastically it can change people's views.