If You Knew What You Know Now

Things I would tell my younger self :

a) Be confident . You are beautiful just the way you are. Embrace your strengths and weaknesses. They are what make you special and unique .

B) Failures don’t define who you are. Look at them as learning experiences.

C) Life is short. Live it well.

 

Good one.

 

What I know now: there are two life-affirming arcs to indulge in life. (1) suspect wildly that everyone is a disingenuous trouble, everything is a vengeful wound, everyone is conspiring against you, everything wants to disarm you, rise full-throttle with exaggerated arsenal on imaginary and self-inflicted reckoning (2) the world isn’t as much interested nor vests in you as much as you think it does. Remark is overanalysed, expression is mistaken, vibes are misinterpreted, no one cares beyond the moment as much as you insufferably brood for weeks on a questionable encounter. Triumphing over contrived problems is not fortitude but farcical. It’s neither brave nor smart nor agreeable nor empathetic. It’s manufactured disturbance in life. It’s rooted in my fanciful mind, not in their furtive motives.


If I knew back then: I would have consciously steered myself thinking more like (2) than (1) and foregone all the pride in youth on triumph over self-constructed impediments that have no intrinsic value. Not grappled with invented conflicts. I would have displaced (2) falsely claiming praise and pats in illusory wins through mishandled ideals and self-accrued problems with (1) truly grasping the nature of and disintegrating the self-directed problem/dilemma/malaise.

 

What I know now: pesky, unruly and moronic waifs are invariably accepted in the romantic tutelage of suave, witty and sensible men keen to reform these wildlings. Whilst good-natured women sigh where are good men, these waifs wonder why such good men. In their provoked and whimsy pursuit to impress the men, to captivate the men, the waifs read frantically, educate themselves strenuously, gallivant and flirt in science and literature with these men only to realise how much they have changed from their former selves. They still are waifs at heart but condition themselves into cultured women not to embarrass the men who have entrusted them with their learning. Wilful and bad women cross with witty and good men! Nature’s paradox!

If I knew back then: nothing would have changed. I have never erred on this observation.