Letter to my 80-year-old self

Letter to my 80-year-old self

Part of what inspires this letter is the distinct possibility that I may not make it.  I hope to live another 25 years, and 45 would see me serve out my contract, but there’s no guarantee of tomorrow let alone decades to come.

This is the thing about life.  We take it so much for granted, and curse it so much, yet at the end of the day there’s no substitute for being alive.

Dear 80-year-old self

I hope you feel satisfied to have arrived at eight decades of life lived.  Back when I wrote this, I was almost 55 and not at all convinced that I would make it to where you are today.  At that time, when I wrote this letter, there was enough evidence around me of how fleeting life is, and how often and cruelly people are taken early.

However you feel physically and mentally, consider it a bonus that you have lived so much life.  I know you’ll have more wisdom than I do now because over the past 25 years since I wrote this you will have seen a lot of loss.  You will have lost your parents, and as I write this now, with both of them still alive, it’s a little hard to believe that they won’t be around forever.

When I wrote this, I was a grandfather to two grandchildren with another two grandchildren on the way.  It will seem strange to look back at this time I’m sure, having only just become a grandparent in the recent years.  From your viewpoint right now you probably feel like a veteran.

You may look over the past 25 years since I wrote this and consider what I don’t know now and pity me for it, but also feel a little excited for the good things to come.  For the pain ahead from the present context, as you reflect back now reading this letter, I’m sure you send your prayers backwards so I will be safe along the way and equipped to manage each challenge.

I have a question for you.  How does it feel to have lived a full life?  I suspect you may feel you want many more years ahead, you may not be ready to go yet, even if I assume from my ‘tender’ age that 80 years is worth settling for.  I also suspect that you’ve known how hard yet rewarding it is living each day as if it’s your last.

Just one more important question.  Did that vision I was given all those years ago—you know the one—come true?  Did it materialise?  I guess you’ll be saying, “Wait and see, Buddy, keep trusting the process.”  Okay.

I wish I knew now what you know as far as what is worth the effort from what isn’t.  I sincerely hope at this point that there are no significant regrets as you look back over the last 25 years.  I hope and pray I have sufficient wisdom to make most of the right decisions, and I apologise to you in advance (though it is weird saying it this way as you’re reading it from the past tense viewpoint) for those mistakes and the decision-making you’ll inevitably have made.  But, of course, you know that it would be your fault as much as it is mine. J

I wish you could teleport back from where you are into the younger version of myself to tell me some of the things I need to know, but of course that would break the rules of life.  Life is to be a daring adventure or nothing at all.  And I think right now you will understand that even better than I do now.

There is so many things I could say but let us just leave it at that.  I thank you for being you because who would I be without you?  Keep smiling even as I imagine you telling me to do the same thing.

PS. Can you keep going for another 20 years?