Youth is wasted on the young.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
There is no letter to my younger self. This post began with that idea, and I have to mention it for the rest of the post to make sense. I am sorry if I have disappointed you, Gentle Reader, with this false advertising.
I abandoned the letter to my younger self because it didn't make sense. I was going to tell my younger self not to make certain mistakes as if I could go back in time and create a perfect life. The problem is that I didn't know the mistakes were mistakes until I made them. I won't get into Back To The Future time loop stuff if I actually succeeded in sending the letter. If I succeeded, I wouldn't make the mistakes that made me write the letter in the first place. Life is always lived in the forward gear.
The other point is that correcting yesterday's mistakes would have only allowed me to make new mistakes. The bottom line is that mistakes are inevitable and inescapable. The only advantage of youth is that it makes you able to survive those mistakes. The advantage of age is that you have a body of experience culled from surviving those mistakes. Essentially, you are writing a letter to your future self to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
There is no point in hitting the reset button because there is no such thing as the perfect game. Games are just ways to make mistakes and survive another day. I have learned this from playing checkers. I have gotten better at that game because I have learned from all the games that I lost. I have failed my way into winning a few games at a time. I don't always win, but I always learn. It also helps with my TBI recovery.
I am not a winner in life. I am just a survivor. I take it one day at a time. I am still in the game. I am still learning from my mistakes because I make new ones. I just don't repeat the old mistakes. I also learn from the mistakes of others. Reading about their experiences is akin to living multiple lifetimes. This is why I recommend reading as an activity. Reading makes for a deeper life.
I still make mistakes today. I just make sure they are new mistakes. I know to not make the old mistakes again. There is no perfect game, but you can always get better.
