Sage advice to my younger self
A book came out at the end of 2019 collating Letters To My Younger Self, by a hundred inspiring people, all international megawatt personalities talking about key moments that shaped their lives, overcoming resilience and things they wish they’d known.
I’ve got no idea how well this book did - the pre-apocalyptic publication timing probably didn’t help it – but the tome offers everything from sage advice from Paul McCartney on how he found inspiration to Arianna Huffington on knowing your motivations.
These are all well and good, but I can’t imagine any advice from the likes of Buzz Aldrin is going to be useful (‘make sure you’re the first person to step outside the spaceship’). I haven’t read it, but I’m reasonably sure my own observations in the rear-view mirror will be more practical and less grandiose than a celebrity laundry list.
Dear Liz,
1. Magnifying mirrors. For years you will wonder what if anything their purpose is. You will think they are some sort of weird practical joke that beauticians in Myer play on you. I know it’s hard (impossible) to imagine, but one day, your eyesight will deteriorate, and if you don’t employ said mirror to put on your makeup you will look like Alice Cooper henceforth.
2. Alcohol. Look, I’m not going to preach. Some of the best fun nights you’ll ever have as a backpacker will involve a bevvy or two. But there will be plenty of others where you’ll miss half your weekend with a horrible hangover. Just have one less drink every time you go out, you can’t say fairer than that.
3. Try not to care what people might think/say about you. A good way to do this is to hang around with people way outside your usual social comfort zone. Change tribes as it were – become a Trekkie, or go hiking with the Scouts, or hang out in arcades with early gamers. You’ll stop being so secretly judgy and might even grow to think they’re kind of cool.
4. Remember all that rote learning – the periodic table, kings and queens of England, actors who’ve appeared in Neighbours in chronological order? One day you'll be able to talk to a tiny rectangle in your pocket that knows almost everything.
5. Ditto map reading. I know your spatial awareness isn’t as flash as it could be and marking several pages in the Gregorys just for a day trip the Blue Mountains is right up there with trips to the dentist but be patient. The pocket rectangle will cure all your navigational woes. (Side note – keep your Gregorys in the car in case the rectangle runs out of battery life, or the satellite connection drops out – no I’m not making this up.)
6. You know those eighties clothes your big sister loved, the ones you spent years howling derisively at the pics? Hang on to her bell bottoms and heated hair rollers – they’ll come round a couple more times before you reach old age. (There’s no guaranteeing the jeans will fit forever though).
7. Remember that time in year six on a school trip to Wales, when all the kids got off the bus and there was a huge gust of wind and your skirt blew up around your ears and the first you knew it was caught on tape was during the home movie screening en masse to the whole school plus parents? You think you’ll never get over the embarrassment, but you’ll eventually see the funny side and realise it’s actually a minor miracle it was captured on film at all back then.
8. Not everyone on telly is a nice person in real life.
9. The ancient family photo album with the curly plastic spine and terrible black and white pictures of mostly trees will one day become a much-treasured piece of family history. This is because your future self will have over ten thousand photographs saved in the pocket rectangle, so there’s no need to print any.
10. Things you can eat now until the cows come home won’t be on the menu in your later years. It’s very disappointing, I know, but sadly your digestive enzymes get wrinkles too, just on the inside so you can’t see them. Make the most of cheese now, that’s all I can say.
Oh, and last but not least – remember this. You don’t know what it’s like to be old, but old people know what it’s like to be young.
Take care, see you in thirty years.