Learning As You Go

An Army wife whose blog I follow, recently posted an article on Dear Teen Me. Dear Teen Me is a website where authors write letters to their teen selves. I found this intriguing. So I decided, as a non-author, to do it for myself. I started - and stopped - approximately 5 times. Here's why:

I wanted to warn myself about the hard stuff. To try a different path. Not to say a certain sentence, or not to befriend a certain person, or not to bother visiting this or that college. Not to fall in love here, or expect something there. Everything was tied to an experience that had already occurred - and to improve them. But I couldn't improve them. I had to live each one of them exactly has they happened to become me. And I really like me.

I've learned - and blogged many times - that you have to EXPERIENCE bad to see good. Sad to see happy. To gain perspective. To appreciate everything. You can't just tell someone to feel this way or KNOW this is how life is. They won't get it - or believe you. Until they live it.

I would not want to tell my teen self what was ahead. It would kind of ruin the "life" part. Horribly difficult, painful times and amazingly wonderful, beautiful times. And it all has to go together - or it doesn't work.

I don't want to know my future. I wouldn't want my teen self to either. Where's the excitement in that? Life is learning as you go. And that learning never stops. Never.

I did enjoy reading the letter. And thinking back to the hard times as a teen and up to now. But I still have a million things to learn. A million pieces of advice I would probably give my current self 20 years from now - if my life is that long.

So - I guess what I would tell my teen self is simply one piece of advice:

The effort you put into anything in this life, is directly related to results you'll see. And if you think what you see isn't good enough or the "right" answer - even after your best effort - you're probably in the middle of another life lesson. So learn it - and keep going.