Wisom of the Ages
Jul. 1st, 2005 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetI've been enjoying the meme about what you would tell your younger self, if you could, and struggling to think of anything I could say that might have helped, that I wasn't already hearing.
I am a very lucky person. I have had unhappiness in my life and disappointment and I have not found fame or developed a satisfying career or made stacks of money. I have made dubious choices and downright mistakes. But I've been extraordinarily lucky in terms of the people who have been closest to me throughout my life and helped me through the pain mostly generated by other people to a point where I'm pretty happy with who I am and where I am. And I know that this is not an end-point. My life will be different in five years from what it is now. I have my hopes on the direction of those changes, but I'm also excited to know that there will be surprises and the path is never certain.
The greatest gift, I think, is that every age, there have been people older than I am--my parents and my sisters--to tell me that it was going to be okay and that who I am is a special and wonderful person and to encourage me to examine my self, smooth my rough bits, get over it and get on with it. I think especially being the youngest, watching each of my sisters in turn go off to college and get away from the small-mindedness of our home town, helped a lot. Travelling with my parents was also a huge help, knowing that there were many, many places in the world and I could manage in any of them. Things that seemed terribly, awfully important at home in Ravena suddenly fell away in New York, or London. Even when they didn't understand what was happening to me, or know how to help, even when they made mistakes, or said the wrong things, or hurt me themselves, I never in my entire life failed to know that I was loved and that this would not be all there was to my life.
Everything else I needed to know, I learned for myself and they are things that telling cannot teach.
I am a very lucky person. I have had unhappiness in my life and disappointment and I have not found fame or developed a satisfying career or made stacks of money. I have made dubious choices and downright mistakes. But I've been extraordinarily lucky in terms of the people who have been closest to me throughout my life and helped me through the pain mostly generated by other people to a point where I'm pretty happy with who I am and where I am. And I know that this is not an end-point. My life will be different in five years from what it is now. I have my hopes on the direction of those changes, but I'm also excited to know that there will be surprises and the path is never certain.
The greatest gift, I think, is that every age, there have been people older than I am--my parents and my sisters--to tell me that it was going to be okay and that who I am is a special and wonderful person and to encourage me to examine my self, smooth my rough bits, get over it and get on with it. I think especially being the youngest, watching each of my sisters in turn go off to college and get away from the small-mindedness of our home town, helped a lot. Travelling with my parents was also a huge help, knowing that there were many, many places in the world and I could manage in any of them. Things that seemed terribly, awfully important at home in Ravena suddenly fell away in New York, or London. Even when they didn't understand what was happening to me, or know how to help, even when they made mistakes, or said the wrong things, or hurt me themselves, I never in my entire life failed to know that I was loved and that this would not be all there was to my life.
Everything else I needed to know, I learned for myself and they are things that telling cannot teach.
