A letter to my previous self

Hello, past version of me. How are things?

Don’t answer that — I already know. I was there, after all. More importantly, I wanted to tell you something.

Before we get into it, let me set a few expectations: I can’t tell you what to avoid, or what went wrong, or how to get rich. Short of straight-up cheating by giving you lottery numbers or something, the truth is that I still don’t know whether we made the “right” decisions, so it’s hard to say what we could have done differently.

That’s the really odd thing about being in the future. I’ve seen the outcome of decisions that you haven’t yet made, like the time you’re going to drink too much and throw up in the doorway just before making it out of the bar. But although that was a pretty bad experience for me, and is going to be pretty bad for you, too, I can’t say for sure that it was wrong. For example, if we’d had one less drink and made it out of the bar an hour earlier, maybe we would have been hit by a car or some stupid thing. That would suck.

Okay, probably nothing that dramatic would happen. But maybe you’d end up missing the cab ride home because the bus would still be running, and then you wouldn’t meet that one particular person while waiting outside for the cab, which would mean … blah blah blah. You get where I’m going with this, right? Butterfly effect and all that.

Bigger advice, like about the relationship that isn’t going to work out or the sudden career change, probably wouldn’t go anywhere either. All things that begin will end. There’s nothing wrong with that.

…Although it might take you a few years to agree. I admit, things were harsh for a bit. My bad.

Long story short, I’m not trying to change our lives. Err, life.

Why? Because I have no way of knowing that where I am today isn’t the best possible future for you to end up in.

Okay, in all honesty, I’ll just say it. This letter isn’t really for you (the past me). It’s for me (the current me). And what I’m trying to tell you — me, uh, us … whoever — is this:

No regrets.

Because if you did anything different, you wouldn’t be you, and I wouldn’t be me. And I’m proud of you — and me.

We did the best we could. So … thanks.