That's an interesting memory.
Part of my professional training included Adlerian psychology, so I'm fascinated by memories. One really interesting component of early memories concerns why we chose to remember any one event out of the many unremembered events that happened around the same time.
Beyond the actual content of the memory, did you take a 'lesson' about the world from that pareidolia-inducing rock?
Honestly I don't know, salient.
I think I was always able to distinguish between it and a real human face. Maybe a foundational moment in my skepticism?
I've been listening to some lectures on existentialism. Apparently Dostoevsky believed that certain childhood events or memories were life-defining.
Perhaps it was the first time that you realized that appearances can be deceiving. Yes, that could lead to a habit of skepticism -- to a simultaneous recognition both of how a particular assumption could be made and to the possibility that the assumption was unfounded.
I suspect, though, that it was not the rock that changed you, rather it was your predisposition to thinking more deeply (why else this blog?) that led you to noticing the face in the rock. In other words, many kids might have seen the face, perhaps when older than you were, but would not have been so fascinated as to remember it. Equally, some kids might not have liked slightly scary curtains and would only have remembered their fear or would have forgotten the curtains entirely.
I think that Dostoevsky was absolutely correct in that belief. Obviously there are events that would define any person's life. I think that the most interesting memories are those 'contingent' memories like yours, where another child in the same position might not have drawn the same conclusion.
Commenting by HaloScan
