Been thinking about that "what I'd tell my 16 year old self" meme.

[randomness]

I know that the point is to post something about yourself as seen through that situation, but, thinking about it, that whole conversation is a bit problematic (leaving aside entirely the physics). So I'll post something related that might fill the bill.

That sixteen-year-old wouldn't listen to the important things, and would want to hear a bunch about things I think are unimportant now. We'd have serious trouble communicating. Not for lack of wanting to, or because either of us would be rude--I've always been pretty polite--but because he and I wouldn't particularly connect.

Even if we removed the element of paradox--I'm telling this guy things that will change his future, and my past, so that now what I'm telling him is different, so what he does is different, and so forth--there's still the problem of my not wanting to tell him things that he'll learn a lot more from by experiencing first-hand, rather than having me try to hand the experience to him.

For example: the first piece of advice I'd give? "Wear that seat belt. I know it's a pain in the ass in that car you're driving; I've never had a car before or since with such an asinine seat belt-shoulder harness combination, and I've driven a third of a million miles in more cars than I can count since then. This scar on my chin wouldn't be here if I'd worn a seat belt. That crash should have killed you." Even that advice is suspect. He needs to learn that lesson himself, because if he doesn't have that scar to remind him every time he looks in the mirror maybe he blows it off once, at just the wrong time, and gets ejected through the windshield at some other point in that third of a million miles.

And the second piece of advice: "When you listen to other people, do it with more thought to what they're thinking and less to what you're thinking," that just comes with years of experience. It's not something you can just tell someone to do.

"Do the hard stuff first. If you know you can do anything, why start with easy shit?" is something he won't listen to anyway, because he's just as lazy as you are now, and while you now actually do take a crack at the hard stuff first, it's only because you've realized how rewarding it is to succeed at the most difficult tasks before you; it makes everything easy from there. But he'll nod, think it makes a lot of sense, and then go on doing what it was he was doing.

I certainly can't tell him what happened to him was abuse. He'd argue with me all the way, and it'd just make him angry and me sad. It took years of someone who was close enough to me to push all the buttons, and pretty much wear them out mashing them, in order for him to come around on that one. I certainly can't do that in one conversation. And what then? He'd still have to live there, knowing. That's not something I'd inflict on anyone.

Most of the rest? I mean, sure, I can tell him it all works out later: love, travel, friends, money; but at sixteen he was already pretty sure things were going to go fine. (This is the guy who just assumed he was going to get into the college of his choice; talk about blind self-assurance.) In fact, he was a lot more sure about everything than he was a few years later, after he'd fucked up and realized the extent to which he didn't know what he was doing. At sixteen, he thought he had the world figured out to an extent I don't think I do.

It all boils down to experience. And I can't impart that. I haven't been able to do that to people who are a lot more receptive, who've actually came to me and asked. I certainly can't to a guy I'm parachuting in on from the future.

Maybe I'd just give him a lot of investment advice. It's the cliche, and it'd amuse both of us to live out that particular story.

Comments

[dpolicar]

Yeah, I share your basic sentiment here.

I occassionally contemplate what I would do if I found myself reliving those years, but there's really not much I could say that would make much of a difference to my teenaged self... it would either be redundant, useless, or practical in uninteresting-to-contemplate ways (e.g., investment advice).

That said, though, I think it might be useful to have the conversation. Not because of anything I might say to him, but because I think that I at 16 -- and even more so at 19 -- faced with someone who already knew all the crap going on in my head that I couldn't really talk about to anyone, might have been able to talk about it usefully.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think I was much more cocksure at 16. I remember most of the crap going on in my head, and I was pretty satisfied with it, so there wasn't much of anything I felt was worth talking about that I didn't already talk about. Having my incredibly aged me appear probably wouldn't have gotten me to say much, because I was remarkably self-unaware at the time.

Mind you, the simple existence of me, largely unchanged, appearing from the far-off 21st century...that would have been something. "Where's your flying car? What happened to the nuclear war? What's with the T-shirt and jeans?"

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I also agree about contemplating what I would do as opposed to what I would say.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

*nod* All my experiences, good and ill, made me who I am today. I wouldn't trade that, though I could wish that I'd learned certain lessons a bit less harshly.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not even sure of that. I mean, if I learned some lessons less harshly, would I have learned them in the same way? I'd be different because of the change, I think.

We are who we are.

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

wow, that's a fantastic place to be all told, i think, and i'm very happy for you. genuinely. (and also maybe a touch envious? i need to think about it some.)

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I should add that this doesn't mean my life is 100% perfect, that I'm always doing what I want to be doing (or even that I know what that is!), or that I don't have moments of existential angst. :-} But when it comes to character, friends, and love, I feel very happy and fortunate.

[marith.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yeah. I think the most important thing I could tell my younger self would be just 'survive; if you hang in there till adulthood it gets better.' It would've been a relief to know that. :)

(Well, that and 'here, have a copy of Utena, it hasn't been created yet so keep it to yourself, you might find it useful to have a more relevant role model than Eowyn. What? No, I'm not trying to warn you you'll turn out a lesbian! Yo- look, just don't ask me any questions about sex, all right? AUGH especially not that one!')

[pantsie.livejournal.com]

This is a lovely and inspiring write-up -- thanks for posting it.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This was really just me thinking in the car while waiting for bedfull_o_books and maedbh7 to emerge from the bank.

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

gosh, you must type *really* fast... ;)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

:)

This actually didn't take very long to write, and it took even less time to think up, really.

[drwex]

Now consider the father's dilemma. We are EXPECTED to give this advice to our sons, knowing full well how little we listened to our own fathers and how much they're not going to listen to us.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me while drafting the original comment that I'm the age my father was when I was 16.

*Him*, I want to give advice to. But he wouldn't listen, either.

[redbird]

Paradoxes aside, about the only thing I can think of that I'd tell my significantly-younger self, given the chance, is "Mind the gap. Really. Especially on Metro North." Because I don't think that head injury made me who I am in a significant or desirable way, and because she might believe it.

There's also the investment advice, of course.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

I might go with "You have ADD, and by the way you also have an eating disorder;" but given the state of the art at the time, even that probably wouldn't have made any difference. "Brush your damn teeth!" complete with horror stories from the periodontist's office would have had zero impact.

I like the investment advice idea, but only if I get to talk to my 18-year-old self who's old enough to buy stock!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually have investment advice he could implement as a 16-year-old, and which he'd know how to act on, which would start him off with a nice stake with which to buy stock at 18.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Note that I don't necessarily disagree with you in the abstract. However, I think I was specifically thinking about my 16 year-old self here, and that guy is only going to learn this with experience.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

No apology needed; I wasn't clear.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You would not have wanted to know me at 16. :)

[killer-mango.livejournal.com]

I look at it more as "what would I say to a 16 year old." Not necessarily me. Because honestly the things I think were important then and now are still valid.
"Wear your seatbelt."
"Wear sunscreen."
"Its ok to have your heart broken."
"Keep exercising your body and your spirit"
“No, really, its ok to have your heart broken.”

Honestly I think these apply to pretty much everyone.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I've had those conversations with 16 year olds. Mostly, they consist of me listening carefully and taking them seriously. Often that's enough, unless they actually ask for advice.

Me as a 16-year-old probably wouldn't.

[totient]

This meme keeps coming up, so I've had a chance to think about it a lot, and I definitely come at it from the direction of "Some random guy who looks kind of like my dad comes up to me at 16 and wants to give me advice". Would I have listened? I didn't listen to my dad.

But. Almost exactly 21 years ago, at the age of 16, I competed in a qualifier for the Junior National Cycling Championships but cramped due to poor electrolyte balance and finished one or two places away from qualifying. Had a random stranger walked up to me before that race and handed me a water bottle full of Gatorade I would have said "Oh, right, good idea" and maybe had a chance to go to the Nationals. I would certainly not have done especially well there, but it'd have been a great experience and modern me wonders what it would have been like.

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

I don't see you as lazy. Do you really see yourself as lazy?

I have tended to put the hard things first. I have this thing about old age needing to be better than my youth was, so just get that stuff out of the way...course, I'm not at all sure it works that way, really:) There seem to be no end to challenges...though it is true that things seem easier than they have been in the past. I expect much of that, however, is letting go of needing to do *everything*...

_{...or even more than a *fraction* of everything;)}

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[progscholar.livejournal.com]

I feel as though I am swimming against the tide here a bit, but I have to disagree with the sentiments expressed on this thread. If I read the post right, your argument here seems to be that the only thing that can influence the patterns of one's behavior is first-person experiences, and not experiences described by other people, observations of other people's actions, or other people's arguments. This doesn't jive with my life. I can think of plenty of times in my life when ideas from another person (either from face-to-face interaction or a book) had a big impact on me; often these were not ideas that I sought out, but ones I stumbled upon. By the same token, I can think of lots of situations in which my direct, first-person experience should have influenced me to take a new path, and I failed to do so.

I am not saying a trip in a time machine would prevent me from making mistakes. (I cannot tell you how much I would appreciate a chance to go back in time.) All I am saying is that I can't see any reason that direct, first-person experience, experiences described by others, or abstract argument presented by another person are more or less influential in redirecting the course of one's life.

There is an interesting question of agency in all of this. If only first-person experiences influence an individual's course of behavior, then it seems like we do nothing but respond to our environment, not act on it. I wonder where thinking plays into this. Do you believe that reflection on one's own experiences can change one's patterns of action? Can other people's reflections on one's life influence change? My own view is that ideas traffic smoothly between all those modes of experience (first-person experiences, one's own reflections on how to live, observations of other people's lives, other's descriptions of their lives, other's reflections on how to live), and that no one of these modes has priority.

I am guessing that R-ness is just speaking about his own life, and not the lives of people in general, but that raises an interesting question as well. Are some people more amenable to influence from one specific mode of experience? A think a big chunk of this is the perceived authority of the source. The words of one person will carry greater weight than the words of another person; first-person experiences gleaned from one situation will carry greater weight than first-experiences taken from another situation; and so on. This is a very deep well, and one worth thinking about more fully later.