Dear Twenty-One Year Old
Me
Hallo
hullo there, future me. I thought I’d write to you but it’s hard
to know what to say because we think very much alike, we share the
same memories but you have the advantage, or maybe the disadvantage,
of more memories than me. I’m guessing times will have changed and
that you will have changed with them. I’d make you a few promises
but if my predecessors are anything to go by, they might be more like
wishful sentiments.
First
of all, congratulations of outliving me and making it to twenty-one!
How utterly spectacular for you. I’m happy for me that you made it
to the big one. Sorry for the ridiculous use of tenses here. Time
travel- you can’t keep it straight in your head and anything that’s
written down is effectively a means of time travel isn’t it? It’s
a way of sending a message down to the future. If you’re still
interested in this, Twenty-One, then I’m glad that we got the
psychiatric help that I obviously need.
So,
let’s just recap about who I am to you. I’d send you a souvenir
but I’m guessing that if I hang onto anything until 2014 then it’s
already a souvenir. Instead, I’ll just lay down a little
description of the me here-and-now. I like Doctor Who, I like
chocolate buttons and eating Nutella with a spoon, and I abhor
dentists, pesky librarians and everything that Bryan Tamaki stand
for. I’m on the cusp of the second year of university and it’s
feeling like you’re about to be mauled by a bear. Everything’s
new but now that I’ve poked it with a stick I’m coming to some
pretty sharp realizations. I think it’s been a bit of a success so
far so that’s something to remember. I can’t wait to have another
barmy year, full of wondrous whatevers.
At
this precise moment, it’s raining. It’s raining and I love the
rain. Rain is cool. Unfortunate and uncomfortable, but if you’re
inside and you see that the thing above you that stops gravity from
tearing your world apart, and you call that a sky, and that sky
suddenly starts making water tumble down and it’s the same water
that’s been doing this for billions of years, makes me feel that we
are living in a pretty fantastic place. I’m not even sure if you
have weather. You’re living in a far superior place in terms of
technology. The way I scoff at VCRs must be the way you scoff at
computers. You lucky devil, me. Every day that moves from now is a
day more that you are approaching and I am departing. Be kind to my
body, because I haven’t.
The
last time I wrote a letter to myself it was to my past and I was
boasting about all the things I knew that he didn’t. writing to my
future, I suppose I should talk about the things I don’t know. I
don’t know when my education will cease. I don’t know if my
perpetual unhealthy lifestyle will evaporate. You hold the answers to
these, and yet somehow, so do I. I just don’t know it yet. I hope
you remember that just as I have limits to my knowledge, so will you.
If I
could give you a bit of friendly advice from the ultimate friend, I
would like to remind you how much fun you have just being whatever it
is that makes you smile. Long walks in urban Auckland, discussing the
follies and ferocities of television with your fraternal friends and
sleeping long after your alarm has alarmed on rainy morning.
Now
that we’ve finished the trivialities, I’d like to get to the meat
of my matter with you. Here’s what I want to say- I know I’ve
been pleasant but in actuality, I hate you. You, you selfish bastard,
have will have robbed me of many things. Not just my life in the
sentimental sense, but of the traits that I would like to be
remembered by. You’ll have finished habitual smoking and when you
consider an after-dinner drink it will probably be a snifter of
warmed brandy. You will wear that hat that Nineteen got and look
ridiculous. You will have seen the rise and fall of a new president’s
popularity, all the while derisively laughing and making jokes even
though your grasp of American, or any, politics is weak. As much as I
am forced to respect you as my successor, I know that you’re going
to bungle things up. How do I know? Because we’re not just two
peas, but rather the same pea, in the pod.
I bet
you think that by now you’ll be grown-up. I bet now you think
yourself as so much more mature than you could ever have thought. Or,
perhaps you’re a drunkard who now does street performance for
money. Maybe you’re an infamous criminal. When I grow up, I’ll
have to grow up to be whatever you choose. What you do doesn’t just
affect me, but also you or maybe it’s the other way around.
Anyway,
sorry for the rant. I’m just trying to remind you that you have to
take care of yourself/myself. I don’t have to love what you do, but
I will always love you. Reply soon, my dear. I look forward to
hearing from you. Be good. Play nice.
Yours truly,
Eighteen-Year-Old
Me.
P.S. Emily’s
cute, isn’t she?
..
Look, I could not have kicked more tobacco juice out of that kid had I wanted to, but he was already beating himself up. He just didn't know it yet. Anyway, when I eventually got to be Twenty-One I did write a response:
Dear Eighteen-Year-Old Me
Listen carefully, you
young prat. You wrote me a pretty nasty letter, and it's about time I
got you back. This letter has been three long years in the making.
Okay, so let's discuss
some things you put in your letter to me- no, I did not bankrupt us,
I did graduate so we now have a Bachelor of Arts with a double-major
in English and Film Studies, and Doctor Who series 7 was awesome (it
was split over 2012 and 2013 so I haven't seen series 8 yet). In your
letter, you discussed how I know things that you don't know, but you
spoke of it as if it were a downside. I disagree with that- oh boy,
this is going to be fun. It would be a crime, it would be an act of
vandalism, to disassemble the illusion you're living in, but that
won't stop me.
I'm
trying not to spoil the surprise of your future, but without
sugar-coating- you're about to be betrayed. Not just by the people
you love, but by your own actions and reactions. They will be
unbecoming of you, they will not be in the name of the Nerd, you
won't really understand why events transpire when you're Nineteen,
but in hindsight, you won't start to grow up until this catalyst, of
which you will not know of when it occurs, happens. You will find
employment, you will form new friends, and you will learn to mature-
maturation is not an event that happens in a finite space of time,
but a process that over time presses upon you an evolution so that
you are better able to engage with the world around you. It is a
process that seems
like it will take your entire life, and I suspect that even me,
Twenty-One, have only just scratched the surface of it. Enjoy
yourself while you can, but be aware, It will happen soon. Just to
reiterate though, the coming semester will be traumatic, and it will
be helpful to you if you remember this Robert Frost quote:
He
says the best way out is always through
And
I can agree to that, or in so far
As
that I can see no way out but through
It's
not all bad, and I will reveal that it's actually much better for us
at this age wherein we are Twenty-One. The plan's changed- we're not
at Epsom Campus, we're doing Honour's at City Campus. You have
the degree in English and Film because you're not in the business of
high culture, you're in the business of telling stories, and the
story at City Campus isn't over yet. I'm not sure what we'll do in
this life, because I'm wise enough to say that I don't know much
about life, and I don't know what we're capable of doing, but I have
to try and find out. A lot has changed in the three years between us,
and we've leveled up our game. The biggest difference between you and
me is not about the friends we have, the clothes we wear, or the
things we will write, but solely in the fact that I haven't many
plans for the future and I'm very okay with that.
I'm being vague, and
that's unfair, so let me give you some hard facts about what you need
to be on the lookout for- Welcome to Night Vale, Game of Thrones,
Elementary, How I Met Your Mother, House of Cards, Orange is the New
Black, 30 Rock, Rick and Morty, and
Hannibal. You will
start a band that never plays music, go to Whangamata for a vacation,
climb to the top of Kororareka because somebody wanted a photograph.
You will go to a Masquerade Ball as a pirate, you will join the
collective known as Nerdfighteria. You will read your poetry and have
your plays performed. You've got at least two novels left in you.
You're about to begin the big adventure.
I
saw the musical Wicked a
few months ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it- possibly the best thing
I've ever seen staged. I then went and rewatched The Wizard
of Oz and remembered the moral
of that movie- you have the brains, heart, and courage with you all
along. Remarkably, for a postgraduate, brains has never been
something that served up much happiness. Intelligence has endowed you
with a fuller understanding of the universe, and sometimes I wonder
whether that's a burden that should be lifted. As for heart, as long
as you keep watching Doctor Who I
don't think we'll ever need to worry about that. So, to conclude,
have courage. You're going to need it.
So,
if you take anything away from this letter, how about the message
that the future is not a bad thing? You live a very cushy lifestyle
of hanging out with the nerds and Her, and writing the occasional
1,000 word essay (heads up- I have a 7,000 word research essay due in
a month on The Muppets and gender and ethnicity) and you think change
will therefore necessarily be terrible because you can't imagine how
life could get much better. You're wrong. I don't know why this
happens, it even happens to me, but we'll always be surprised when
we're wrong (I mean, we're wrong about things all the time!). Do not
fear me, Eighteen, as you will soon be me, and find out that the
world didn't end because you wanted it to end. The world, as it turns
out, really isn't about you. It's about us. I'll leave you with
possibly my favourite line of poetry by Taylor Mali: Changing your
mind is one of the best ways of figuring out whether or not you still
have one.
Your
semester will be terrible, but your story didn't start, nor will it
end, here.
Love,
Twenty-One-Year-Old Me.
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