Dear Me...
I heard once, many years ago, a snide remark from someone who said that no one under the age of 40 has any right to write an autobiography. It just should not be done. Due to my NATURALLY OBJECTIVE NATURE... I actually totally believed them and agreed. Sometimes, you just know when someone is speaking truth.
This rule-of-thumb was proved to me (again) after recently reading (most of) Anna Kendrick's autobiography, after I was peer-pressured into purchasing it and reading it.
Anna was probably a fresh 29 years young when she wrote it
Sure enough, the beginning chapters were alright, even GOOD... interesting to hear about how a nobody becomes a somebody by sheer grit and perseverance.
However, not even halfway through, it started becoming drab and reaching, and even at the risk of being kicked out of my 2-person book club, I simply couldn't do it anymore. It became chapters and chapters of descriptions of Oscar parties and dresses and drunken weekends on private islands, and I lost all interest.
I tell you that preface to acknowledge that I am aware that I am FAR FROM the Legal 40 Age limit of autobiographies, and to have a blog for so long (sincere thanks to those whom have stuck with me all these years) is absolutely law-bending.
However, all this time, and in fact from the very beginning, the whole reason I wanted to start writing was first and foremost so that I could chronicle the silly minutia of life, and hopefully observe over time how my perspective, friends, circles, and life events would evolve. I wasn't even going to ever tell a soul that I had a blog... and in fact I didn't widely broadcast it for a while, and then one day, my archery friend Mike and I were shooting, and out of the blue he said, "You haven't blogged for a while... when is the next one coming out?"
I still remember it like it was yesterday! (He's probably reading this.) I was so stunned... I didn't even know what to say! I got right back to work and got back to writing. And to this day, there's nothing that inspires me to write more than when someone nags me about it.
What got me thinking about all of this again recently was a song by one of my favorite artists, Nichole Nordeman. You've never heard of her. She's known as a Christian pop artist (I think?...) and not to sound like a total hipster, but I've loved her for at least 15 years. I would say that about 85% of her stuff is not catchy, radio hits music.
She is a story teller... she weaves lyrics together into the most sweeping and daring melodies and harmonies which move my very core to stand at attention.
It is her songs and lyrics that I hear playing in my head when I am mindlessly cleaning the house, or on long road trips, or getting ready in the morning.
I was able to
This song is not the point.
Only listen to it if you have so much time... :-)
but most of her stuff just isn't mainstream.
She released yet another album lately, which of course I purchased, and somehow I ended up on her email list. Every now and then I'd get an email from her, which was her blog - which of course I ate up. I don't even read blogs - who has time for that crap? I don't even read my own blog. I'm kidding, of course.
There is a song on her new album, and a blog post to match, about how her high school teacher made the class write themselves letters about what they thought their life would be like in a decade, and then the teacher actually mailed those letters out back to the students, ten years later. The song itself is beautiful - it starts off kind of eh...., but I was absolutely choked up by the last third of it. Not in a hysterically-girly-crying sort of way, but in a deeper, soul weeping way. Here it is, in case you are lying in bed tonight and want to listen.
It is a good exercise to think about what you would tell your younger self. Pick a few ages of your life, and think of what you would tell yourself.
I once asked Yanni what he would go back and tell this young lad (this is him in his youth, back when he was a young record-setting swimmer from Greece):
and the Yannster totally shut me down by saying something like, "Nothing - I have always known exactly who and what I wanted to be, and I never let my focus stray from that." And I was like...
That's nice, YANNI, but the rest of the freakin' world is not a bunch of actual masterpiece-creating geniuses, so thanks for making yourself even MORE unrelatable, you perfect Greek God of Music. I mean, don't the rest of us wish that we knew from a young age exactly what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives... and then actually do it?? What great fortune.
Alas, for the rest of us, our roads were a bit bumpier, probably with quite a few turn arounds and sketchy bits of path that we've all just squeezed our eyes shut and hit the pedal to the metal for.
When I think about what I would go back and tell myself, I don't find myself regretting risks I probably shouldn't have taken, or car rides I shouldn't have been in, or arguments I found myself breaking into tears over. In fact, what I cringe upon when I think of my most pinnacle moments is my self preservation. Times when I didn't fight for someone, or stick up for a friend. The times when I was babbling on and on, when in fact what would be like gold in my hand now would have been to be the listener of that particular encounter.
Of course, I certainly don't beat myself up over very much, in fact, I've even mentioned here that I am adamantly against undue guilt and will beat the heck out of you before I'll let you hop on the guilt train. (For some of you. There's a difference between undue guilt, and sweeping transgressions under a rug like they never happened.)
Therefore, I try to be gentle with myself when thinking about what I would have told my younger self.
I wonder where my high school self would have thought I'd be ten.... even twenty years forward. Married with kids? But like... a cool mom?
The mom with whom all the other kids wanted to spend their time? Or maybe I would have pictured myself traveling the world, basically a hobo, but like... a cool hobo?
It's never really been hard for me to talk with people, and it's not hard for me to be the one in a room full of people to kick of a common conversation or even create a lovely atmosphere of awkwardness (you're welcome.) (At our last "meet the new guy" breakfast at work, I kicked it off with, "Okay everyone, let's go around the room - what was your worst childhood fear???") That's a product of having moved around so much, and being thrust into so many brand spankin' new social circles for most of my early life. It really comes in handy!
But there also came a point, and I have trouble pin-pointing when it happened, that I stopped allowing myself to shine so quickly, and now I occasionally find myself anxiously avoiding certain social recipes so that I don't have to use that muscle.
Somewhere along the line, I've swapped boisterous laughing with strangers with self preservation. I bet this happens to the best of us all, but after giving it some thought over the past couple of weeks, THAT is the message I want to go back and tell younger me:
Don't stop acting like a fool... keep embarrassing your friends in public. They'll play like they don't know you, but they really love you. Talk with strangers, put yourself out there, at risk for a negative and downer conversations. Be bright eyed and unaware of glares. Dance down the grocery aisle. Stand arms-wide-open, regardless of who might fall into them. It may cost you time, drama, stress, anxiety, money, tears, anger, fear, loss of appetite, countless hours of worry, but don't stop accepting invitations to humans. Let people touch you, let them love up on you, because it is hard to get back into the habit of allowing people back in. Let people be human with you - there will be good times and there will be awful times. Don't give up on them. Don't let the few idiot donkeys mess it up for the masses who actually need you. You are here for a purpose - and that purpose is not within your right to withhold. See the greater need, even on the dark days. Don't let the bitterness win... Not today, and not tomorrow. Love them like they were your own blood. It's hard to undo the damage once you've lost that sense of connection with people like you used to be able to enjoy so easily.
Hopefully you'll think about this exercise for your own younger self. Maybe it will inspire you to be nicer to yourself, and to others who are, in fact, ten or twenty years behind you, or even in front of you, down the road a little further. Remember that everyone around you is going through something, and we all need each other to pull through this dang thing. No man is an island, my friends.
Can't wait to see what I would add to this entry... ten years from now.
Oh the things to come...
