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Back when I was a young David I went off to university at 18. A year later I plopped back onto my parents doormat for the summer holidays and headed off to the pub where my school year had passed most of their time to see who was about. It seemed most of my old friends had had the same idea as the place was crawling with them, all seemingly having grown shoegazing hair and bought Wonder Stuff T-Shirts like first year students did in the early 1990's and an evening of catching up took place.
As I sat round chatting and holding forth about just how generally fantastic I am one of my old friends, who I hadn't seen in a year, turned to me and said in that tone of world-weary dismissal which is only available to cynical teenagers, "You know, you haven't changed a bit, have you?"
I turned to him, cheerfully. "Why should I have?" I asked. "I got it right first time."
I don't know if you've seen, but Stephen Fry has written an open letter to his teenage self in The Guardian, and as ideas like this tend to go the world of LJ has piled on it enthusiasticaly, with a large slice of my friends list writing to their teenage selves with advice.
It's an interesting question. What would you say to your teenage self? What would I say? Several people have already told me that letters like "Dear David; Netscape float at $9 a share and peak at $1497. Don't sell too early" are cheating and so not allowed, and it does seem to me that something saying "Dear David; You're right all along about the Labour Party but don't expect anyone to listen to you until it's far too late" is just a waste of time because I knew I was right all along anyway.
Most people's letters seem to be either reassurance to their insecure younger selves that everything is going to turn out fine or advice to avoid certain cringe-making mistakes that they feel they could easily have done without. The thing is that my younger self was, if anything, even more enthusiastically optimistic than I am now so I'm not sure that reassurance would really be necessary, and I tend to view mistakes as being essential ways to learn and if I didn't make errors it would not be possible to learn firstly not to make those errors again and secondly to look for better ways of doing things. As such, I wouldn't warn myself off anything so no letters like "Dear David; stop after the second bottle on your 21st birthday. Trust me on this one".
Overall, then, I'm not sure what I'd change. Our mistakes make us ourselves and without them we could never learn or grow. It is the people who do not accept they can ever make mistakes who I fear most. It's better - possibly even essential - to make our own mistakes than to rely solely on the wisdom and experience of others.
Overall, then, I think my letter to my 16-year-old self would read something along the lines of
Dear David
Keep up the good work.
David.
What's yours?
As I sat round chatting and holding forth about just how generally fantastic I am one of my old friends, who I hadn't seen in a year, turned to me and said in that tone of world-weary dismissal which is only available to cynical teenagers, "You know, you haven't changed a bit, have you?"
I turned to him, cheerfully. "Why should I have?" I asked. "I got it right first time."
I don't know if you've seen, but Stephen Fry has written an open letter to his teenage self in The Guardian, and as ideas like this tend to go the world of LJ has piled on it enthusiasticaly, with a large slice of my friends list writing to their teenage selves with advice.
It's an interesting question. What would you say to your teenage self? What would I say? Several people have already told me that letters like "Dear David; Netscape float at $9 a share and peak at $1497. Don't sell too early" are cheating and so not allowed, and it does seem to me that something saying "Dear David; You're right all along about the Labour Party but don't expect anyone to listen to you until it's far too late" is just a waste of time because I knew I was right all along anyway.
Most people's letters seem to be either reassurance to their insecure younger selves that everything is going to turn out fine or advice to avoid certain cringe-making mistakes that they feel they could easily have done without. The thing is that my younger self was, if anything, even more enthusiastically optimistic than I am now so I'm not sure that reassurance would really be necessary, and I tend to view mistakes as being essential ways to learn and if I didn't make errors it would not be possible to learn firstly not to make those errors again and secondly to look for better ways of doing things. As such, I wouldn't warn myself off anything so no letters like "Dear David; stop after the second bottle on your 21st birthday. Trust me on this one".
Overall, then, I'm not sure what I'd change. Our mistakes make us ourselves and without them we could never learn or grow. It is the people who do not accept they can ever make mistakes who I fear most. It's better - possibly even essential - to make our own mistakes than to rely solely on the wisdom and experience of others.
Overall, then, I think my letter to my 16-year-old self would read something along the lines of
Dear David
Keep up the good work.
David.
What's yours?
