Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Imagined letter from my future self to my present self*

Dearest Aarushi,

It is I, you, from the future. We live in space now. And your husband is an alien.
Haha, I got you. He is a Permanent Resident. But we still live in space. Only on the weekendends.

(That's the new term for the super long weekends that happen every 3 weeks. They give everyone a nice 4 day break for moonwalking and anti-gravity love-making, which is totally something that people can do now.)

I am just writing you this note to tell you what all future selves tell their past selves. I mean, I would tell you wisdom and advice to make you avoid the mistakes I made, but I kind of like my life now, and I don't want to royally screw myself over, and as I don't remember getting one of these notes myself, I'm probably causing Armageddon as I write this. I'll go back into my study and suddenly have a unibrow. "I just plucked this," I will think, and then I'll realize my kids have morphed into a bunch of creepy internet cats (yes, those are still a thing). It won't matter because by that point, everything will have blown up.

Where was I? I was telling you something. I am going to reinforce for you what you already know, bambalina, but maybe it will sound better coming from someone other than present you. What to you is a distant hope, to me, is a memory. You may be yet uncertain, wondering what your mark on the world will look like, or even if you'll even get the chance to make the mark that you want to make. But make no mistake - you will find a way. This is partially because you will never stop being passionate. Follow your passion - it will be your map. I know this sounds disgusting, (we brought back vomitoriums!) but it is my belief that we gravitate toward the things that we really like. There is a reason you continue to hang out with those weirdos you're friends with; they make you laugh and they talk about nerdy stuff that you also enjoy talking about. There is a reason why you move on from people who are too quick to judge, or who constantly make fun of other people and give dirty looks. No one likes people who give dirty looks. Even now. We make them clean the vomitoriums. It is through these conversations and through these associations and through those other things you find yourself doing (cleaning out incubators and plating cells and re-reading papers, thinking about genetic treatments that use viruses to incorporate the better gene into the target genome, listening to the Shins and weird books about neuroscience) that you will understand what you are truly lusting after. It's not really about the songs you listen to, but about what you're really feeling when you hear them. (...but it's also about the songs you're listening to. We need to talk about some of that stuff. Yep, you were wrong about some stuff. But I'll NEVER tell, muahahahahahaha.)

So here's one for you - you have far from exhausted your potential or your resources. There are still so many people, places, and opportunities you have not yet explored that will be crucial to the development of your character, and of your career. Hell, there are even songs on your iPod that you will discover as your favorites, maybe a year from now. Right now, you are affecting people in ways that you won't begin to realize for years to come. Life is a mystery, and not everything is knowable; as an internal and slightly psycho person, you may think you have everything figured out, but there is always a crucial amount of information missing. Your experience of the world is not the only one that is multidimensional and layered. Like it or not, there are worlds - big worlds like those built of multilateral organizations-- and small worlds, like the ones that exist inside of your friends, that you will not ever be able to access. But life is wasted dwelling on what you can never do, so don't. Uncover all the worlds that you can, the ones you never knew existed. There are millions of blessings that you don't have, but the ones you do have are unique and brilliant, and catered just to you. In the age of customization, isn't that the best that you could ask for? For the sake of thought exercise, imagine if today you were given the gift of Olympic skating ability. You can speed skate with the best of them. You are no longer clumsy when you get on ice. What would you do? Gaining this new talent would be totally stupid, because 1. you're too old to get into that business now, 2. skating makes you cold and you don't understand how it works and you have a ton of other hobbies that you care way more about. Maybe this is a bad example because speed skating is starting to sound really badass. The point is, your particular talents and gifts have shaped you into the kind of person who can fully enjoy them. It's like how youth is wasted on the young, but the opposite.

That's all I really have for you. I have to tend to your alien F1s now. Labor wasn't as bad as you think it is. IT WAS WORSE. Also, you are totally never getting Alzheimer's! Good for you/me/us/the future generation of Agnis.

Yours (and mine) truly,

Future Aarushi

P.S. You should be ashamed. You know what I'm talking about.

*Disclaimer: I'm sorry.

1 comment:

becca said...

i miss you :(