Letter to the 16 year old me

Since the Coronavirus lockdown, I've been spending a lot more time watching Netflix. I recently saw Kannan Gill's stand up performance - "Yours sincerely, Kannan Gill" and realized that I hadn't laughed so hard in such a long time. There was something about it that made me connect to Kannan's words in a way that I just couldn't explain. Just an FYI, the performance is in English, so even if you don't speak any Indian language, you can watch it. However, I can't guarantee that you'll get some of the jokes. Some of them require the cultural context of growing up as a millennial in India. 

After a little more thought, it hit me. Kannan's performance is centered on a letter that he wrote to his future self when he was 15 years old. This resonated with me a lot. During my undergrad, I took a psychology elective. Our professor gave us an exercise - write down how you imagine yourself to be 5 years from now. I was 20 years old back then and I wrote about how I expect my life to be when I'm 25 years old. Years later, when I read that description of how I expect my life to be, I realized that in a weird way my life did turn out a lot like my description. I did achieve most of the things I set out as my aims in that essay. However, the path I took to reach it had been one I couldn't have imagined even in my wildest dreams as a 20-year-old. 

This got me thinking something new. What if I could write a letter to my past self? What are the things I would want to tell the 16-year-old me? Would I tell my younger versions about certain mistakes to avoid or certain risks to take that I didn't? That would defeat the whole purpose and also, possibly cause a Temporal Paradox situation (future changing because of a past event which is caused by a future event - like in the movies Terminator and Interstellar). 

So here's how I defined the constraints to the letter I'd write to my past self in the simplest form:

"What would I want to tell my past self that would not alter any of my past decisions at all, but instead, help me cope with those decisions better than I have managed till now?" So here it goes, a letter to the 16-year-old me, in the summer of 2008, who has just finished his year-end exams (Boards as Indians would call them) and is entering into the last 2 years of his high-school (Yes, back in 2008, you had to pass the State Board exams in 10th Grade as well). 

14th June, 2020

Dear Sunny (past), 

Subject: Facing the future

I am the 28-year-old you, writing to you in the midst of the summer of 2020. I can't tell you anything about what you should and shouldn't do because that could possibly create a new timeline and as a consequence, I might not exist. What I can tell you, are 3 things that will possibly help you to cope with things better in the future: 

1. Remember "Who moved my cheese?" - We once read this book about how life is constantly changing and we must accept change as a natural part of life and adapt quickly. The quicker we adapt, the more satisfying our life experiences will be. Trust me when I tell you this - your life will change in a lot of ways a lot of times over the next 12 years. So remember that book. It'll help us a lot in the future. 
2. Don't think about the "What ifs" - Life is just a series of decisions you make. It's one path of the millions of Monte Carlo simulations that you can run on your life. Some of them will be good decisions, some of them will be mistakes. That's not the problem. If it's a good one, it'll make you happy. If it's a bad one, it'll teach you a lesson. You'll make a fair share of both. The trouble is with the ones that will leave you wondering "what if I had taken this decision differently?" and a lot of them will haunt you with absolutely no consequence because they're not things you can do anything about. So if there's one advice I'd give you, don't waste your time thinking about what-ifs that much. Doing so probably wouldn't change the course of your life. It might just give me fewer dark circles under my eyes which, at the age of 28, I can happily live without. 
3. You won't have it all - This is probably a lesson you should learn sooner rather than later. Life isn't a movie. You won't get everything you want. You won't be a multi-millionaire mid-20's super successful dude with hard abs with your own penthouse with a view. I know you and I know what we dreamed of becoming at the age of 16. A lot of those dreams won't come true. It's not because there's any fault in you but because they're just fantasies and not goals. However, there will be a lot of things in life that we'll work hard for and we'll get our fair share of what we deserve. Sometimes we'll fall short of a few things here and there and it'll leave us feeling sour. We'll wish we got more, but for the most part, life will be fair to us. So be real, be rooted to the ground. Dream those dreams. They're amazing for sure. I'm 28 and I still dream of owning the cars that you dream of owning. However, know that a lot of those things just happen in the movies. That some things are just meant to be dreams. Goals turn into realities. Dreams just end when the sun begins to shine.  

All of these things are probably generic bull-crap to you. They might even leave you depressed or hurt. However, being 12 years ahead of you, I want you to know that you'll turn into a much better person than you are now and we can be proud of ourselves for that. Also, if your cocky arse thinks for a second that that's not possible because you're so awesome already, trust me, no you're not. 

Yours sincerely, 

Sunny (future)

So there it is. A letter to my past self. If there's ever a messaging service that allows you to send messages to your past self, I hope this gets through and I hope it doesn't alter the timeline. Also, I've put in the trailer of the stand-up show at the bottom. Do have a look if you're interested.