The starlight you see tonight left a long time ago. First impressions are old light too.

What reaches you has always been in transit. The light arriving tonight left before you were born, so you are seeing a star as it was, not as it is, and the same delay applies to people. Your picture of somebody was assembled from a version of them that has already moved on, and it keeps getting consulted as though it were current.

So allow for the delay in both directions. Give people room to have changed since you last looked, and extend the same thing to yourself, because the way somebody read you at thirteen is also old light. It is nobody’s fault, and worth correcting for.