Things I Would Tell My 20-Year-Old Self If I Could

Looking back, I have learnt that one should not take life too seriously nor take people for granted

- Michael Han

I was watching Terminator: Dark Fate during the New Year holidays. In the 2019 film, human-like machines and an augmented female warrior were sent back from the future to fight for humanity.

Watching the action-packed movie fired up my imagination. What if I could travel back in time? What would I tell my younger and clueless self?

If experience is a good teacher, these are the three lessons that, at 54, I would like to share with myself at 20.

My first message: Don't take things too seriously because most things will sort themselves out eventually. For this, too, shall pass, goes the Persian adage.

I would tell my younger self that he is given the space to be human, however flawed, but not a perpetually miserable one. It is said that pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.

My younger self must learn not to carry hurts with him and allow bitterness to darken his world. He must know that anything that he cannot let go becomes a part of him. It changes him for the worse.

While we may be separated by time, what connects us is what my younger self sows, I reap later.