Rear View Mirror

I am not the best of drivers.  Sometimes I get a bit lost looking through the rear view mirror.  Disaster potential!  But I can do that with relationships and life in general too.  I keep looking into the past, my past and past relationships.  When I do this, I do not allow that people might have changed for the better, that is, matured.  Rather than confirm their growth, should I meet them again, I keep treating them as they once were.  If someone came up to me, (and it has happened) and said, "I cannot believe you became a priest, or are still a priest.  You were such a jerk!" it would not engender a healthy present relationship.  There would be no relationship.  One of us is living in the past, in a "rear view mirror life."  If someone who currently knows me were to say I am a jerk now, that might be OK.  But I am not the same jerk I was years ago.  I am a different jerk today.  Still, it would engender no relationship.  Names do hurt.