by V.O.
If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gone back on a few important convictions I used to have. Like having children is something to avoid, for instance. But that’s fine, because convictions are often meaningless pap, and need to be changed once in a while, as you grow. It also probably means you are a pretty messed up young person. I’m sorry about that, it’s the best I could do for you. At least please know I didn’t do any of it with malice.
If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gone back on a few important convictions I used to have. Like having children is something to avoid, for instance. But that’s fine, because convictions are often meaningless pap, and need to be changed once in a while, as you grow. It also probably means you are a pretty messed up young person. I’m sorry about that, it’s the best I could do for you. At least please know I didn’t do any of it with malice.
If you’re expecting this letter to contain advice, you’re right. But I’m a relativist too, so remember every statement is accompanied by a shrug, meaning, that whatever I’ve just said may or may not be so. Which leads me to the major point of this letter: you are you, not me, nor anyone else. You are a human being, and you are alive, which is usually better than to not have been at all, or than to be dead. So you are, to a great extent, free to extract your own convictions from the subject matter that is life. So much so that maybe this letter is pointless. Still, I believe something is usually better than nothing, so I’m plodding on.
As you are probably already starting to see for yourself, this world offers a lot of possibilities. Hopefully your world is just as free, or even freer, than mine. Possibilities are generally good for you, because they can keep you away from the desperation of boredom. Still, they make for something which is very dangerous, and that is temptation. This is an important stumbling stone for any person, except fictional characters such as Jesus, and, if you are anything like me, and suffer from a deficit of attention, the danger for you to take bad turns is compounded by sheer inattentiveness. And it’s not even that simple. Sometimes you will be tempted to do things that are actually better for you and others in the long run, only you will not know it for sure until maybe years after the fact. But remember, just because these choices come to you in the form of temptation doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. You’re sure to make your fair share of wrong decisions that you’ll end up regretting. The answer to this question is not easy, and a lot of it will be answered by luck, so let’s hope you’re lucky, or at least let’s hope you have a lot of power to overcome bad stuff.
One of the things you least want to mess with is love, believe me. Regardless of what you’re imagining now, you will fall in love, and others will fall in love with you, and you will be forced to deal with having power over others, and their having power over you. At first you will probably be superficial and hard-hearted about it (that’s what I was), but you’ll soften up with time, I don’t doubt it, because when you hit the brick wall of love a few times, it’s you that gets mushed up and tender, not the wall. In any case, just know that losing the best job in the world is nothing compared to losing love, so you want to be careful. I’ll let you fill in the blanks on that one.
If you want to lead a good life, which I’m sure you do, another thing you don’t want to lose sight of is your dignity. Sometimes it’s more important even than love. But the dangers of love aren’t the biggest possible threat to your dignity. It’s little everyday stuff that can be most detrimental to it. So you want to be careful about that too. Keeping your dignity can make the difference between a good night’s sleep, and an uneasy vigil fraught with shame and self-doubt.
One of the biggest threats to dignity, as far as I’m concerned, is anger. Again, if you are anything like me, you will probably not escape anger in the beginning years of your life, especially if you are a boy, but you want to let go of it as you mature. There is little or no use for anger in our world anymore, I believe. Whatever it might have done for us when we were in the primeval forest, dodging the constant threat coming from wolves and tigers and tar pits, there are other ways now to cope with the challenges of life. So don’t sell your dignity at a discount, and choose these other paths instead, you’ll know what I mean. And for some surprising good news, your dignity is one of the things about you least susceptible to chance. You actually have control over this one.
One of the things that separates you from me is that we were born, if not in totally different times, certainly in totally different places. I was born in a vacuum of expression, I have no doubt. I did my best, or fumbled, however you prefer, to get out of it, and got out of it to a great extent. But certainly not entirely. Nothing is perfect. In my day, I suffered for long periods from a malignant kind of boredom, and that is not without consequences. I still carry with me some of the dead weight accumulated then, which I was unable to shake completely even afterwards. But you, you have other opportunities for self-expression and improvement, and that is why, unlike with anything else I have mentioned, I positively forbid you to indulge in this pernicious and perverted sense of superiority over everything and everyone that surrounds you, that is boredom. Not only is that not true and a mistake, you simply are not entitled to it, you have no right to it. YOU are not in a position to be bored with the world, because your world is not such that you can’t do anything with it. This is a deal-breaker with me, so careful. You are insulting my memory if you are allowing yourself to be bored.
If anything, there are too many things to do with your time. You won’t have time to check all the boxes that are available to you. And this is another issue I advise you to be aware of. In any given situation, there are a million things to consider, if you’re going to claim you know what’s going on. It’s true, after you’ve been immersed in a certain situation for a while, you’ll get a good gut feeling for it, which has little to do with your intellect. But those are not all the situations you’ll ever face. It’s strangers that will put you on the spot most, that will put your adaptive power to the most intense use. In the simple matter of choosing to hold a door open for a person, or yielding to them on the road, you’ll be making a million judgments, and will be the subject of a million judgments. But nothing is as effective as a smile, and a healthy load of generosity, politeness, tolerance. But hell, if you can’t bring yourself to feel these, at least have a kind of generous disinterestedness. It’s better not to care, than to care the wrong way. Complexity will be one of the most tiresome and relentless things that you’re going to face in this world.
And you’re going to have a relatively limited set of tools for coping with all of this. The ideal way to go through life, it is said, is a cheerful disinterestedness that neither goes crazy about anything in particular, nor categorically denies any one thing its legitimacy. It does not afford extreme enjoyment, nor does it allow you to sink into despair. It is something like total neutrality in regard to everything, and it’s called wisdom. Now, I’m pretty skeptical about its actual existence, and I certainly don’t demand it of anyone, not least for fear it might be demanded of me in turn and I might come up short. Wisdom is an ideal, and I’m doubtful anyone truly possesses it. But there are other ways to keep desperation at bay, of which I am more sure. For instance, one step in the direction of a good life is prosperity based on work. But that requires that a bunch of different things go right for you. Humor though, is something that is instantly accessible to you, and can do quite a lot for your life standard. And what’s more, we know for sure it exists. I don’t want to stress this point half to death. Suffice it to say that if you’re lucky to have it, it can make a host of things easier for you, so try to not to let it vanish from your life if you have it to begin with.
I’m running out of good advice here, kiddo. One more thing though. Remember what I said about boredom, that it’s a shameful refusal of life, and that it’s ungrateful. Well, what you want to do is experience more of the opposite emotion, namely gratitude. And I don’t mean malarkey like unconditional gratitude towards your parents, your teachers, and other authority figures. These are just people who happen to be older than you, that you can’t avoid early enough in life if they are assholes. They should have to earn your respect and gratitude, and not have it implicitly. What I do mean is abstract gratitude to the world, for what you’ve been blessed with (I know the word ‘blessed’ is suspiciously Christian-sounding, but ignore that if you can, there’s something that rings right about it), and active gratitude for particular people, who have behaved like human beings towards you. Moreover, gratitude will make you yourself feel better, believe me, so if anything, it’s actually a selfish emotion, but one that doesn’t really hurt anyone. So indulge in it freely. Don’t take after your peers, who for sure will be ungrateful brats. But they are mostly fools, and need to grow out of it asap. Do yourself a favor and shake this bad habit as early as you can.
One word of warning: I’ve put all of this out there unequivocally, as a tried and true path to a virtuous and accomplished life. It’s not necessarily so, for several reasons. Not the least of them would be that this approach in and of itself will not make you any money. Another is that everything is relative, and supposing it applies to me, it does not necessarily apply to you too. And finally, luck will have as much a stake in most of it, except dignity, as your own input does. Still, don’t despair, rather laugh if you can.
And remember this one last piece of advice: whatever you choose to do with yourself, and you’re free to go any direction you like, try to have good grammar, because fools will rag you about it, and it will subtract unjustly from the legitimacy of your point. You don’t want to give them the satisfaction, especially since there’s such an easy fix for it.
May god (who does not exist, though this need not take anything away from the solemnity of the benediction) bless you.
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V.O. is an aspiring (still) young hipster, who dabbles in music and words. In his spare time he is a student of literature at the University of Chicago. You can find his music here and his writing here.