A conversation with my younger self

Encouraged by my friend Donna

Were I given a chance to do so, at what age would I approach my younger self with my current hard-earned wisdom?

Perhaps if I chose too young an age, he wouldn’t be able to hear me.

Perhaps as a young man he might ignore or rebel against my sage counsel, as he was inclined to do with advice at that age.

At what age might it be heard, and also important for him to hear?

What if I could pick a couple of times during his young life to drop in—like an angel—and get in his ear with different messages?

Life can be both long and short depending on one’s perspective at the time. One of the most simple and powerful sayings I’ve ever heard describe it says, “Days are long, life is short.”

For each and every one of us, opportunities and lessons come along at different times in our lives. The act of seizing an opportunity or learning a lesson happens in different ways at different times in our lives, but the action taken may have more impact if learned sooner. Lessons are learned slowly over time, and an opportunity may have slipped by during that period when the lesson and the opportunity were presented to you simultaneously. Some lessons simply must be learned through experience regardless of counsel. I believe there are opportunities to learn lessons until the day we pass from this physical being.

Our creator bestows each of us with the gift of choice. How close—or how far away—we are to that divine higher power can help determine those choices.

How many people in life are fortunate enough to know at a young age what they want to be or do when they reach adulthood? Only a small—perhaps fortunate—percentage of us are either instilled with a passion early in our lives, coached toward a goal, or raised by strong parents who forge the path for their kids. Isn’t it generally a teacher, a coach, or parents that provide the guidance? By encouraging and mentoring young people they might spark something in that child that sticks. What might the opportunity and lessons be at this age? Perhaps it would be to always be curious, to learn with the beginner’s mind, and to try lots of new things. So much of what they need to learn is yet ahead of them.

The vast majority of us choose a vocation or a career path out of necessity or lack of choice. We don’t really know what we want to do, but at some point we’re forced to do what we need to do. Mom and Dad may have paid for college or simply booted you out of the house at the age of eighteen. Either way, we learned quickly that responsibility came hand in hand with the sudden sense of freedom.

Caveat: The work I’ve done in my recovery from drugs and alcohol and my marriage to a professional therapist who specializes in Imago and recovery therapy help me understand that as an integrated and conscious person, I am constantly in dialogue with—and dealing with issues of—my formative self that developed in my family of origin at a very young age. We all are. Whether we’re aware and working through these issues is the difference between doing the work and not doing the work. As a child we are constantly downloading the information and the environment around us. We are built with a geneology and an epidemiology that determines much of our operating system (our OS). We then build our belief systems (our BS) over our lifetime as a result of this stew. The ways in which we choose our partners, our work, our friendships, our emotional attachments, and our reactions, all stem from this recipe—much of which is outside of our conscious control. Consciousness comes later when we can begin to understand and integrate these past selves, forgive ourselves, and realign with our faith in God.

All of that said, an attempt to converse with our younger self is both imaginary and very real. We’re talking to ourselves with the gained wisdom of what that younger part of ourselves might need, knowing all the while that we’re still struggling with these established patterns, or we wouldn’t entertain this process in the first place.

If I were able to drop in on my younger self at say—age 10—what might I say to that lad? I would say to him the following:

—Keep your dreams alive. It’s too early to give up on anything. You know that dream you have of singing and dancing on stage? It’s still possible. Keep at it. You know that dream you have of hitting the game winner for the Cardinals in the World Series? You might still be able to do that. Play hard and keep loving it.

—I know that you’re occasionally afraid. It’s OK. Fear is simply a lack of knowing what the outcome is. Listen to that quiet voice that you hear sometimes. Have faith in that voice.

—Don’t give up on yourself. You’re tougher and more resilient than you know. You will go through hard things that you cannot even imagine right now. Trust your faith. Your courage and your character will be revealed to you. Keep trying.

—You are loved and loveable. Try to understand that there will always be people who have different things and different qualities from you. Some more, some less. Good loves you all the same. You are enough—you have enough—to make a life that is rich and wonderful beyond anything you can imagine today.

—Cherish your family. Just like you, they’re doing the best they can. Love them and allow them to love you.

—Be kind and don’t bully. Other kids that appear to be tough or mean at your age end up washing cars and emptying trash trucks. Is that what you want? Be kind to others.

I would say those things to myself at 10.

As songwriter Shawn Mullins sang;

Bear down, take another town and station by storm
Crank up the tunes and meet the full moon and the Carolina corn
But don’t let it pass you by
‘Cuz someday you’ll wake up asking yourself why
You sat there at your desk
Suckin on the corporate breast
You turned out like the rest

Chorus

Hey you, check out the view windin’ down the road
Me and the miss sharin’ bliss and soakin’ up the sun
And i feel like i’ve been resurrected
In my lifetime I have never felt protected
And loved like I do, when I am here with you

And I know you’ve got somethin’ to believe in
Down deep inside your desparate soul
Hey friend, don’t you stop believin’
In dreams that you had
In the dreams that we all had, when you were just a lad

Keep on dreamin’

Given the wild blend of impetuous and sensible choices I’ve made in a lifetime up to this point, what would I go back and say to myself at the age of 20?

I’d say:

—work is important, but finding work that means something to you is more important than money.

—do what gives you joy, not what you think will please your parents. You may not know what that is yet, but you already know what it isn’t. Ultimately they’ll be happy if you’re happy.

—don’t confuse lust with love. Both are great, but they are separate things. Sometimes they come together.

—Instinct and impulse are different things. One is a feeling. The other an action. You can trust your gut. You can manage your actions. When we’re young we might confuse those two things.

—it’s OK to not know. Pray. Listen. The clues will come.

—find a way to work for yourself. No one you work for will ever share your passion or truly appreciate your worth.

—save a little bit out of each and paycheck. No matter what. Don’t count it just do it. It will buy you freedom of choice when you need it the most.

What about talking to myself at age 30?

I’d say:

—first let me say to that young man in his physical prime—I forgive you dude. You’re not going to do anything that kills me. You’ll come close but I will survive. I know you’re having fun—it’s OK. I’m here at my advanced age sharing this with you now because you will make it.

—Let’s talk about habits. What habits have you developed that will help you along the way? Habits that will hurt you? Understand that any pain that you’re feeling now can either help you or hurt you depending upon how you respond to it.

—try to understand how blessed you are and have been. Be grateful for the gifts and the differences you’ve been given by God and your family. Not everyone gets the same gifts. Try to recognize and acknowledge that.

—try to finish what you’ve started. Whether it’s related to work or interpersonal relationships or activities—see them through—particularly the ones with promises attached.

—please know that you will make mistakes. Everyone does. Some will be made with the head and many with the heart. It is okay. Try to learn from them. Try not to repeat them, but if you do—see number one—I forgive you.

—you will grow and learn more from hard times than easy times. It will suck going through the hard times, but you will come through it and you will learn.

—Opportunities come along every day. Opportunities to change. To move forward. To retreat. To reset. To be honest. Are you seeing them?

—How have you treated the love that has come to you? Have you properly valued those that shared it and given it? Love isn’t transactional—in its true form it’s transformational. Have you given it and received it freely?

—Pay attention to the details but don’t let the little things bog you down. Invest carefully and let go gracefully.

When I look back on my life I have some regrets. Everyone does if they’re honestly examining. The few regrets that I do have center around how I’ve treated others in my life. There have been times when I treated others carelessly. Times when I was dismissive—when I didn’t understand the value of that person in my life—when I easily let them go. These are the times when I’ve been the farthest away from my faith—the times when my own Ego has eased God out. One of the lessons I’d hope to be able to impart to my younger self is to be more patient with people who have invested some of their precious time in me. And to be able to forgive myself.

At the same time, discernment is a hard-earned skill. I struggle with it even now. My well-honed instincts generally know pretty quickly whether a person or a relationship is toxic. I don’t always practice the advanced skill of understanding that I can’t change that person. I can only change my relationship to them.

As Maya Angelou once said, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” I would say the same about people.

When I look back on my life, there are many affirmations. Mostly I’m proud of my resilience. I have been there and done that in many aspects of life. I have not always been able to keep myself out of the quagmire and outcomes of bad decisions I’ve made. What I have been able to do is survive those outcomes and rise again to make different decisions the next time around. I find peace in that.

Can we teach others how to be resilient? I’m not sure we can. I believe it’s something that is developed by hard experience. One singular thing has risen to the surface in the writing of this essay. It is a point that I would hope to impart to my younger self, but not sure that it would be heard, so I left it off my lists.

That singular thing is do the hard stuff first. I was born with many gifts, and I developed skills that resulted in many things coming easily to me. I learned very young that I could get away with it. I could outrun, outplay, outperform most others with a minimum of effort. That led me to some accomplishment. It did not serve me well as I proceeded down the various pathways of my life. When the hard stuff came—as it does for all of us—I had a tendency to look around for the easy way out. If—and only if—I couldn’t find that easy button to push, then I would knuckle down, push through the resistance, and pull the rabbit out of the hat. Learning to do the hard stuff first might have saved me a lot of physical and emotional pain over the decades.

That said, what are any of us in the present moment without the experiences and lessons of the past? We are here now because we were there then.

Those are the things I would say. Hopefully I might listen.

What might you say if given the chance?