For the past few months I have been working on a project that takes place in the 1980s. While I'm not ready to reveal what it is that I'm doing, I somewhere stumbled on this photo of me taken in June 1986, when I finished eighth grade and prepared to start high school.
I originally had planned to simply post the photo partly because some people knew me in those days while other people have little idea of what my teen years were like. But in the time that the photo sat on my desk and I've been working on this project, it made wonder something, if I could go back and talk to the fourteen year old me, what would I say to her?
Many times I have heard people talk about how if they got a chance to go back in time all the advice they would give their younger selves to make life different, perhaps easier, perhaps more fun.
I spent some days contemplating this and during that time I also began to think about how I might have lived those years and my college years differently. I can't remember exactly what I had been reading at the time but there was a part of me that maybe wondered if I hadn't accomplished enough or taken advantage of enough opportunities.
This was the part where I had to shake my head and remind myself that– especially in light of my sister's suicide when I was twenty-one and in the midst of my college years– of everything I had done. I had taken just about every opportunity that either I sought out or had landed in my lap and run with it. Sure, I could have gone in different directions but it was just that, different directions. I doubt I would have accomplished more, instead just different things.
That's when I realized that I wouldn't tell the younger me in that photo anything. Yes, I can give you a laundry list of what I could have done differently, what I should have done differently, but I know that had I told her any of that, it would have meant she experienced life differently and that wouldn't put me in the place that I'm at now. It doesn't mean that her life would be any better or worse, just not the one that I'm reflecting on and living now.
At each day passing I find myself filled with an immense awareness of how my life has led me to where I stand now. While there are still never enough hours in the day for everything that I want to do, I can see that everything is as it's supposed to be, that I'm where I'm supposed to be in the journey. I just need to keep running with not just the oportunities that come my way but the thoughts and ideas that stream through me, too.