An Exchange of Letters

A reply from a too-clever-by-half teenager

Hi, Stephen

Thanks for your letter. Great to hear from you, if a little surprising - I didn’t expect to be getting advice from you and from my future. When did you stop calling yourself Steve? Was it something to do with your job? An attempt to sound more grown-up? Or was it just an age thing?

I really appreciate the opportunity to get the benefit of your experience; it could have been so useful, but I’m just not sure it is. Please don’t misunderstand me; I know what you’re trying to do, but I wonder why you think I might need your help. Is this your way of telling me that I’m somehow responsible for how things have turned out for you? Is your life not quite what you hoped it might have been? Have the choices I’ve made or have yet to make spoiled things for you?

Maybe I’m being unfair. After all, I don’t really know what you are and who you have become; I’m only going on what you say, or don’t say in your letter. I mean, and I’m guessing here, it doesn’t sound like you’ve achieved that much, does it? If you were, say, a footballer or a rock star or James Bond or something, then maybe I’d listen to what you have to say. But I don’t think you’re any of those things, are you?

I know you mean well when you say ‘go for it, follow your dreams’, but is the flip side of that ‘because if you don’t, you’ll end up like me’? Are you trying to have another go at those missed opportunities by suggesting that I should do this or that and then I (or you) will get to that shining city on the hill?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you sound unhappy or unsatisfied and it seems pretty clear that you love your family and your life, but I’m just not sure yet that I want your present to be my future.

Perhaps I can help you. Rather than telling me what I should or shouldn’t do in order to make you something other than what you are, maybe you should simply accept and enjoy who you are. All the things I’ll get wrong will make you what you have become; if you regret them and try to change them now, you might lose the life you’ve made.

So I will carry on getting things wrong, making the wrong decisions here and meeting the wrong people there, but these will be my mistakes and I’ll take, not pride, but the comfort of knowing that they are all my own choices. And in time, I might one day learn to think before speaking or acting and, if I’m lucky, it’ll turn out ok and, like you, I’ll be happy with my lot.

So thanks again for your letter, but please don’t write again - we’ll catch up later.

Cheers,

Steve

PS Thanks for the heads-up about Gary Glitter - I’ll put the albums in a box, out of sight.