I’m not really sure when this photo was taken but I know it was well over 40 years ago. It’s me when I was just a few years old, before I learned so many of life’s lessons.
As I look into the face of that happy, innocent child, I wonder what advice I would give him. If I could go back to the mid-sixties and give my ‘young self’ some life advice, what would I say?
I think I’d tell him not to worry about the small stuff so much. I’d also tell him to cultivate a strong reading habit.
Some of my strongest advice would be in the area of faith. I’d recommend that he stay as close to God as he could and to learn how to lean on him through the good and the hard times.
I’d tell him to make the most of his relationship with his mother because he’d only have her around until his early twenties. (Thankfully I did have a great relationship with mum, but she still passed away far too soon.)
One of the things I’d be sure to say is to make sure you take lots of risks. Not reckless risks that would endanger him or others, but risks that ensure that he didn’t ever wonder ‘what would have happened if only ….’.
I’d tell him to treasure every relationship.
I’m sure that there would be plenty to tell that young boy. There are lessons that I’ve had to learn the hard way that would have been easier if someone had the right words to say back then.
Overall, I don’t have many regrets but I certainly wouldn’t want to go back and do it all over again. I’ve had a pretty good life so far and while it’s likely that I’ve passed the half way mark already, I still feel as if life is just beginning in some ways. I’m also finding that a lot of the advice that I would give that young boy is the kind of advice that I’m giving or need to give to the two young lives God has entrusted to me now.
If you could go back and give some advice to yourself when you were very young, what would you say?
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That is an interesting thought Rodney. I guess I would give myself four pieces of advice.
1. Listen to those people in your early teens who told you about Christ
2. Wait for the right girl. She is coming.
3. That God will use your illness to shape your life in a positive way and others will come to Christ as a result.
4. God has an amazing plan for your life. Trust Him and live it out.
Hopefully I would have listened!
I’d go back to the past and give myself some realky specific advice like, “Save your pocket money and get Dad to invest in some Microsoft and Nokia shares. I know it makes no sense now but trust me on this one!”
The problem is you go back in time and just like in the movies, or as practiced by psychic frauds, you get all this generic feel-good advice: “Everything is going to be okay.”
But forget going back, my 39 year old self would like me from the future to appear with some very specific advice and reassurance. That would be nice. of course, once I tried to blog about it I’d find myself in Graylands under heavy sedation. Which, when I think about it, could be just the ticket…
I think you were about 4yrs old as I was about 8-10 with associated pictures.
Good advice. I wish I had known many of the same things back in the “mid 60s.” I think your advice about taking risks is important. I have tended to be risk-averse. Maybe that is why I became a lawyer. Looking back, I sometimes wish I had taken greater risks while I was younger and didn’t have as many responsibilities. These days, with my family responsibilities, I don’t have the luxury of taking risks. If I take risks, I am risking not only myself, but my whole family.