I have been reading Philip Roth's auto biography in which he writes the first half from the position of himself seen through his own rose-tinted spectacles and then, in the second part of the book he criticises the picture he has created by asking questions of the underlaying factors that brought into being the man so carefully constructed from the fiction which we all carry about regarding ourselves.
The imaginative construct (analysis from another or the other point of view) is so revealing. As a process we could all benefit from it.
Our imagination taints everything. We construct a reason-based story about our lives of why we did what we did. We give it our best shot to define our movements. We construct an alibi to rid ourselves of the unpleasant fact of being at times, unpleasant.
Riding the wave of creative fiction we make our lives palatable, not just to others but more importantly, to ourselves. It's not a question of highlighting the missed opportunities but of a deceit as to why we did what we did, (or didn't do), especially the issue of our interaction with people. We constructed walls to keep them out rather than doors to let them in. We were not whole-heartedly open, a defence against being hurt by ridicule from those not mature enough to begin this trail of self examination, asking the question of others "was I really that bad"?
Roth is unerringly determined to find answers, not so much to change who he is but to put the record straight.
It would do all of us some good to look into our own persona, before we depart and become, merely a memory
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