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?
It’s good to be back home after a week with a very big family.
