[EF] In retrospect

To my younger self,

I see that time has been kind to you and now you are at a cross-road again. Good bye post graduate program. You are not thinking of continuing to PhD right? Enough schooling I think. Things are going to be harder from now on since it is just you and the world. There is no more escape as you’ve exhausted your student card. Going home is also not an option at the moment because you feel like you still have a lot to accomplish.

I know you are waiting anxiously about the consultancy job you’ve applied for. It has been a life long dream, so I hope you are not going to be shattered if you don’t get it. It’s ironic that both of us are back in the same exact situation right now. Having a back up plan is always recommended. Life is a process, sometimes the process is more important than the result.

Ten years have passed and you have gone through a lot. You have made some decisions that you were not proud of and to this day I wonder what had gone into you at times, however I guess youth explains it all. I applauded you for always having the nerve to just jump into things. I think that’s what saved you a lot of times. At this older age, I wish I still have the same amount of courage as you did. The world moves a bit slower now.

I hope you’ll remember that you wanted to learn from your experiences and not just bury them in a frozen reflection pond. Uncertainty is difficult to embrace at any age so don’t fret if you’d make resolutions that are often just mushy platitudes for self-improvement and easily abandon them in that uncertain future. For the most part you’ll get fatter in spite of your pledges to lose weight. You’ll find yourself working too hard and taking your loved ones for granted despite promising yourself otherwise. You’ll also find weekends when you just want to stay home and watch terrible television and wait for that unexpected thing to happen that will change you.

Time is a moving continuum and cycles often repeat themselves. I hope you’ll continue to be brave and grateful in face of them all.

And now, onto the real life, business as usual.

From a time in the future,

Your older self.

________________
February 27, 2015