Here we are, a typical Friday night for my husband and I, our "Friday date night". We are all warm and cozy on the couch. Tonight it was my turn to pick something we have not already watched. That is scary, the bad movie picker always becomes the brunt of a bad joke. Lately, I have become the chosen one. As a result, I have learned not to listen to my oldest son's recommendations. He gets lots of pleasure leading me down REALLY bad movie paths, just to hear our crazy reactions.
This particular evening, I was in the mood for action mixed with science fiction. Will Smith always seems to do a great job with that combination, so I picked Gemini Man. The scene that got me thinking was the part where Henry (Will Smith) is talking to a younger version of himself, "Junior" (also Will Smith). Henry is a retiring assassin that doesn't have a family or anyone close to him. He explains to Junior not to make the same mistakes as him. That he deserves a family, something he always wanted and didn't get.
That started the morning brain thinking. What would you tell your younger self if you only had 5 minutes? What timeframe would you go back to? It would have to be a time when you would listen to yourself. That is when I quickly decided that teenage years are out, LOL!
In my life, I feel pretty comfortable saying that I have learned a lot from each experience, good and bad. That those experiences and how I grew from each of them is what made me who I am today. They were not always easy to bare. So, in thinking about these two questions, here is what I would say and the timeframe I would pick.
I would go back to a time when I felt completely lost. One of my dark, in my 20s, moments. There were a few, but remember you can only pick one. The dark moment I want to return to is after a long term relationship failed with a guy that didn't deserve a 1/2 minute of my time.
It just dawned on me this is also like Back to the Future as well. Now, how to not scare the crap out of myself when arriving. The older self looks way different, than the younger self. In knowing me, the younger self might also offer some advice to the older self based on that! Something like, "Maybe you should stop eating the potato chips?".
During that, dark in my 20s moment, I was working fulltime, going to school fulltime and lived on my own. I was sad, from the failed relationship. This is when the older self arrives in a dream. Otherwise the younger self is going to think she is having a psychotic episode. While the younger self is sleeping, I would appear and whisper in her ear the following: "Trust in you, things will turn out ok but you have to get through it with all that you are going to learn. It is hard work but worth every minute. You will do a good job surrounding yourself with people who care about you this point forward."
Yep, encouragement is what I picked. I won't lie, lottery numbers did cross my mind. My fear is it would have stopped some of the hard work that was coming my way. To me the hard work and what I learned is priceless. Loving yourself is even more priceless. Now, I am going to tell my current self the same thing.
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