Dear Younger Self

The dove of Magritte

Man in A Bowler Hat, 1964 by Rene Magritte

A small print of this piece was left in the apartment I took over in the East Village when I first moved to New York. All these years later, on all the walls of all the places I’ve lived since then, it’s been with me. Gazing ambiguously, affectionately at my clumsy attempts to be an artist and see the world in any vivid way at all.

To me, it screams imagination and if you only saw it from where I’m standing.

I woke up this morning and read the most recent post from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love. Not surprisingly, the letter this week centered around the graceful, generative ground of silence, stillness and solitude. I continue to be moved by her output as a human and an author. Further, her words feel timely.

It brought to mind an Open Letter Series I did for Red Bull Music Academy back in 2018. I was urged to go back and read it. I realized, in many ways it was my own Letter from Love and perhaps worth revisiting here in tribute to her invitation to greet ourselves in this way, regularly. A gesture to reorient us back into right action with ourselves.

Sometimes I feel a little like the bird flying across the man’s eyes in the Magritte painting. I catch a glimpse of myself in passing. But it’s not until I am older, bathed in that wretched, holy hindsight, that I can see where I was blind, and where I was soaring, riding the wind on the wings of a dove, catching the wave toward my eventual, singular horizon.

I think it’s a beautiful idea to write yourself a letter from Love. What would she say? What would you say? To that young man, that young woman.

There is, of course, something rather silly about writing with earnest wisdom to your younger self. And that is, because, you would never actually seek to change their minds. Though some part of you wants them to be free from that future-coming pain, you also know it’ll be how you get to where you are now. It’ll birth that grit. That depth. That heart for the world. And so, you would say it all, but you know she wouldn’t listen, and somewhere in you, you would smile, feeling that’s okay. You needed to say it anyway, so that she knew you loved her and wanted the best for her though you couldn’t ensure it.

Photo by Michael Donovan, from the music video ‘Foolish Thinking’

There is a fragile naivety to human beings. We think we can save each other from the inevitable hardships of life. But, we are solitary as we are sentient, and it is only a fool who will seek after only joy when the sadness has so much to teach him.

Perhaps, a letter like this one below, is written to train our inner senses to keep feeling for ourselves (like a thing, ripened until it is real) when the shapes of life grow unfamiliar.

To experience my darkness not as a void but as a sacred obstruction to some false seeing, a piercing of the exalted image to which I so vainly cling, a white dove darting from the corners of my periphery and into my naked vision, changing how I see things for a moment.

It’s as if she’s is saying…. wait for it, wait for it, wait for it….

Yes, I am listening for the version of me who has slowed down time enough to notice the white dove dart past my eyes.

Dear Younger Self,

Need not worry so
For the leaves of this life will change and soon go

You will blossom from anguish and unwelcome despair
But know that I’m waiting for you when you get here

The river will keep on toward our common ocean
It flows through you, a silence amidst the commotion

You are a channel, an echo, a receiver
Lean in on evenings when the winds tend to whisper

Stay close to stillness, your armor in the white noise
A mirror to your flaws but a softness to your poise

I know you’ll take vows that will help you stand tall and proud
But don’t be disheartened when you can’t please the crowd

You are a work, my dear, of art and paradox
Dance in your introspection to see what it unlocks

But linger not too long in your fear of dissonance
It is a necessary intrusion to disrupt your innocence

Dark nights of the soul will quietly shadow where you roam
But in that aching solitude you will find what you now call home

Forget not to look outside
And see g-o-d where she insists to reside

In all things, moments beautiful and tragic
Lose not your longing for childhood and magic!

Remember your parents have more still to learn
Don’t mourn for the bridges you cross then must burn

Forgive yourself when you inevitably fail
Learn to fall kindly upon love that prevails

For well-held you are, though it seems a dense confusion
Stay devoted through ever-growing threats of delusion

‘Forget yourself in the dream of daily life’
Buechner said, in other words, lose yourself to truly find;

A heart that is primal, raw and refined
In the fire of all that you learn to leave behind

Rage with the flames but be not consumed
Because clearly this life isn’t done with you!

Chase the ordinary moments and make unexpected friends
It’s in these small things that you’ll grow to depend

In a warm room, when you trace words on a window of condensation
Remember big dreams all start with small conversations

Love, Older Self

Till next time,