This first project, I must admit, is probably one of the easier ones that I will be attempting this year but I thought it would be best to start slow.

I’ve decided to combine three brainstormed ideas into one in order to give this project a little more relevance and substance.

My Week One project is to write three separate letters to myself. These letters are as follows:

1. One to the sixteen year old version of myself
2. One to the forty year old version of myself
3. One to myself after I am dead, cold and in the ground

I hope that these letters can be used to help me reflect on my life; where I have been, where I hope to go, and what I hope my life will be been worth in the end.

Here it goes.

Dear 16 Year Old Version of Myself,

Stop thinking, sitting, and listening.

Start Doing!

If I could only offer you one piece of advice that would be it: Start Doing! Don’t get me wrong, for your age and the life you live, up until now it has all been perfectly fine and you have done well with what resources you have had to work with. However, the next few years of your life can be the most influential, informative and important to self development and as such you should do all you can to make them count.

What do I mean by all of this?  Let me explain.

If I were you¹ I would stop listening to what everyone is telling you and start to think for yourself. It sounds really more difficult than it actually is, trust me.

You may not realize it right now, but even though you think you are thinking for yourself you really aren’t. You are letting others do the thinking for you and in turn you just think that you are having original and independent thoughts.

Take education for example, you think it is your idea that you need to go into post secondary education right out of high school (or at all) to be able to make something out of your life, but believe me, this is not the case, this is simply what the majority of people out there in the world want you to think. Believe me when I say that formal education institutions will be out there your entire life, just waiting for you (if that is what you want, you still aren’t sure) to attend them, so now, while its fresh in your mind you should explore the world and yourself.²

School isn’t the be all and end all, so stop believing that when people tell you that. You will learn valuable life lessons whether you are in a formal setting or not. So my basic advice about education is that you do the very basic that is required to get by and you use the rest of your energy on more important things, you, yourself and most importantly: life.

That is after all what this is all about.

I don’t want to go too far into this, but I want you to know that you will have an impact on people all around you, not because of any formal education, but rather because of things, skills, abilities and personalities you will develop outside of any formal institutions that you will ever attend, and that’s what counts.

Now on to something FAR MORE important: Girls.³

…

All I want to say to you in regards to this is that I can’t offer you much advice as I still don’t have it figured out for myself. The two pieces of advice about girls that I can offer are as follows:

1. Don’t ever let a girl (or anyone for that matter) force you to change who you are, if they do try and do this they just aren’t worth it. Now this isn’t to say that you won’t change because of a girl, because you will, but it will be on your own terms and not because she is forcing you to⁴. You will know when the feeling is and isn’t right, trust your instinct, it will never fail you, well at least not in the next 10 years.

2. Although this may seem simple and trivial remember: Girls are Evil. All of them. Period.

Although the below formula is not my original work⁵ I can confirm that it holds much truth in life.

Learn It. Know It. Live It.⁶

I am sorry that I cannot offer you more advice in terms of girls but I fear that even as I learn more myself I still will not know everything there is to know

…

When it comes to work I want you to know that you don’t need to work your teenage years away. You should work a bit, to keep yourself sane and to be social, however, don’t work 40 hours a week while going to school, its just not worth it.

Sure you are going to say that the money is great, but truth be told, you will be much happier with less money than with more.  Its true, at least from my perspective, and I am you, so trust me.

You will have plenty of time to work later in life, so only work now to support travel that the only thing worth it, trust me.

Work just enough to get by and to plan for a rainy day but never let it become who you are, I did for 7+ years and it almost killed me.

I wanted to say something about this guy who had 52 jobs over the course of a year because I think that it is so inspirational, but I think his project speaks for itself so check out his website. You do know what the web is, right?

…

TRAVEL.

…

As much as it pains me to say this, don’t pick up a digital camera with the intentions of doing something with it until you are 26 years of age. It’s ok if you have one to “capture” the moments and memories, but please don’t pursue ‘making’ pictures until you are 26 years of age.

I give you this advice and point you in this direction only because I want to make sure you stick with photography unlike any other hobby you have had, all of which you have let fall to the way side over the years.

Deep down I personally believe that you have what it takes to make some great images and have them influence yourself and the people around you, I just don’t think you will have the capacity and willingness to stick with photography and develop your skills at your current age. I don’t want to see you pass up the opportunity I currently have.

If anything I encourage you to find some way to be creative working with what you have in your everyday life. You are a creative person, you always were growing up but somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, you stopped being creative. I won’t sit here and blame anyone, and surely I would never blame you, but somewhere along the way your creativity got lost, so please go and find it.

I could try and direct you more along a creative path, but I don’t think that would be in anyone’s best interest, so I think its best that I just let you go with these few words on creativity and see what happens:

“If you want to change the world, who do you begin with, yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves, and do the things that we need to do and become the best person we can be, we have a much better chance of changing the world for the better.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

…

So I know that I started writing this letter telling you to start doing and then I got lost on some wild tangent, but that’s how I/we operate, you know that. So rather than continuing to ramble I want to leave you with one last thought:

Be Yourself.

Regardless of what you observe in the world and what you find people telling you, please never stop being yourself. Trust me when I say it might be hard to accomplish but boy is it worth it in the end. When you can call something your own and be proud of it there is no better feeling. Oh, but one thing to keep in mind; stop just short of thinking you are original, as the harder you try to be original the more you end up being just like 99% of the population out there.

So be yourself but don’t try too hard, whatever the hell that means.

…

So I leave you to think about everything I have written. I don’t expect you to do anything specific with it other than read it with the understanding that it comes from me, who is essentially you, only from the future with far more knowledge than yourself.

So with that said, perhaps I expect you to listen to everything I have said as they are the things I would have done differently if I could go back in time. But as I may have already mentioned, I cannot time travel and I must live in the now, so I am off to do exciting things, or eat peanut butter⁷, whichever comes first… actually they are one and the same.

Cheers.

Your 26-Year-Old Self

ps. Earlier when I said Travel, and that was it, I meant it. Travel.

Dear 40 Year Old Me,

I’ve got to hand it to you, considering how the first 25 years of your life went I have to say that I am more than surprised with how far you have brought yourself in the past 15 years.

Where do I start?

Well lets start at the obvious, you’re still in London, but lets be honest in saying that we know that would always be the case.

London is home.

Its great though as I can see you are more involved in the community than ever before. I’ve heard some people talking about how you have had a positive influence on their personal self and the community and I think that is absolutely fantastic. We can be honest about this, it would have never happened if you had moved to another town and tried the same things, you just wouldn’t have had the same emotional connection to any other community like you do with the one in London.

I’m happy for you.

And I mean the great thing about you staying in London, other than your family and community, is the fact that you have been able to travel much more than if you had lived in other comparable cities. London’s affordability and location were always two things that I really enjoyed.

…

I am glad that you got back to Paris again and didn’t stay as long this time as you did last. I am certainly glad that you made a point to make it to the so-called “mother land, Holland, I know its something that you always wanted to do, but I am sorry that you didn’t get to do it with dad, it just wasn’t his thing and I surely respect that. But you sure have been all over, but as you have said in the past, Ottawa and the East Coast are two of your favourite places, and it certainly shows. I am sure that the coming years will have as much, if not more, travel in them as the past 15 years has.

…

If it were someone else writing this letter they might be writing about how surprised they are that you got married, but in all honesty both you and I always knew tit would happen, we just knew that we were going to wait and do it on our own terms, so good for you. It seems as if both of you are extremely happy and that you both are living life to its fullest. Not much more to say on this topic, I think it speaks for itself.

…

I am glad to see that you made it through your midlife crisis ok, I mean at age 30 it seems a bit early, but now that its been out of the way for 10 years you have been able to concentrate on the many important aspects of living you life, which is a good thing. Some people might be surprised to know that you had this crisis at 30 years of age, but it only made sense considering what you put yourself through during the early ears of your life, mental breakdowns and all, but that’s all in the past and was a learning experience to say the least.

…

I look at what you are doing now and laugh at how much it reflects what you always said you wanted to do.

Do you remember back in grade 5 when you had to do that career project and everyone laughed at you for saying that you wanted to be a sanitation engineer⁸? No one could understand why you would ever want to do this job. I guess good money and getting up early in the mornings were never the ideas for a job for a kid in grade 5, but truth be told, you never had some specific job you wanted to do, and asking kids this in grade 5 is the sort of thing, I would argue that is not right to do anyways. Boy that last sentence was a long one.

Then remember your answer for the remainder of your schools years to the questions of; “What do you want to be?”, and how your answer, “Happy“, was never good enough for anyone.

Well it was good enough for you and that shows with what you are doing now.

You always said that you would be in the education system for the rest of your life, in one form or another, and it looks like that is very true. It seems as if you have found the perfect balance between learning, teaching, art/photography and living life. Because things turned out so well I am glad that you never let anyone convince you that being “happy” was never good enough. But then again, as long as you were happy who really cares how things turn out. For people like us, happiness is all we have and all that we need, so what more is there to say.

Stay happy.

…

I think if you were to die today⁹ you would leave this world having a fulfilled life. You have done many of the things you always wanted to do, including, skydiving, cross Canada travel and worldwide travel and I don’t think that you would regret¹⁰ anything that you have done.

All I can say is that until the day comes when you no longer wake up a happy person, head out into the world and explore.

I know that you have never been much for poetry, but I once read the following and thought it would be appropriate to include here:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Robert Frost, 1951

Although I most certainly took that poem out of context and probably skewed its meaning, for some reason I thought it was appropriate to include in this letter to you as a reminder of how to approach life, at least from our perspective.

…

I’m not sure what else to write to you, it seems as if you have everything under control and are happy. All I can offer you, as a younger version of yourself in the form of advice is this:

Don’t stop, keep on pushing and keep up what you are doing as it seems to be working.

Cheers

Your 26 (almost 27) Year Old Self

Dear Dead Self,

Since I don’t believe in heaven, hell or any other place in the afterlife I’m not too sure who I’m writing this to, but I will write it none the less but make it relatively short and sweet.

…

So you’re dead eh? Well that’s kind of shitty but it happens now doesn’t it? I mean we all have an expiry date and yours just came past due, but it’s a good thing. I wouldn’t have really wanted you to keep on being alive if you couldn’t actually live out life, so I guess it’s a good that you stopped when you were on top.

So speaking about that, you really went out with a bang now didn’t you? I know you hated hospitals but I didn’t know you hated them enough to avoid it when you were dying, but it was for the very best. The last thing I would want is to be on my deathbed in the hospital having my family look after me and having to put up with my wrinkly old self. So it was in everyone’s best interest that you went out when you did and in the way you did.

…

It looks like you did the things we wanted to do before you died and you had a good go at all of it. Some of the things you excelled at, others not so much but you had an honest go at it, and that what matters most, that’s what people remember.

…

Speaking of people remembering you, apparently (to my surprise) there were a fair amount of people that you had an influence on over your life, it showed at the party that was held to celebrate your life. That’s right, instead of a traditional funeral and mourning that takes place a party was held (as directed in your will) that celebrated your life.

Although there weren’t a large amount of people that came out for the celebration, those that came out were the ones that mattered. There were a few close friends, some former students, some people from the community and a small number of family members. It seems that most of the people who came out had good stories to tell and great memories to share.

Some people may see this as an inappropriate way to pay respect to someone who has past away, but personally I wouldn’t have it any other way.

…

To be honest I am not sure what else could be said that would be appropriate to write in this letter.

I could write about the things you have done for the community, but I really think that those things speak for themselves and can be seen and experienced in the community.

Although we never thought that we would have any type of “legacy” to leave it is apparently that we have left a positive one, regardless of if that was the intention or not.

So I am going to leave it at that and keep it very short.  Regardless of anything I say now, nothing is going to change, you will still be dead.

The life you lived was a good one, an above average one if I give my honest opinion. I think that the things you accomplished during your life were very commendable and they you should be very happy with the results. Many people go through life unhappy and die feeling as if their life was worthless and a waste of time, this however, is not a feeling that you have and that alone should leave you smiling in your grave.

You gave it all you had and you died happy.

Way to go.

Kevin

1. and I was at one point [↩]
2. Although this last point I am sure you already have covered. [↩]
3. commonly referred to as Women when you grow up. [↩]
4. at least this is what she wants you to think [↩]
5. In the year 2010 there is seldom any original work left, everything is in fact owned, created and controlled by Apple. [↩]
6. Watch Fast Times At Ridgemount High [↩]
7. You grow out of your peanut allergy, just be patient. [↩]
8. Garbage Man [↩]
9. Which I don’t hope happens [↩]
10. “I do not regret thing things I have done, but those I did not do” – Empire Records [↩]