What would you tell your younger self?
Can wisdom be taught?
If you had the chance to send one piece of advice to your younger self from a decade back, what advice would that be?
I asked this question on Instagram recently.
Fifteen people responded to this and the results are listed at the end.
I’ve never liked the premise of this thought exercise though:
It creates a temporal paradox
It annoys or disappoints the younger you
What’s the point?
A Paradox
When presented with this question, most people would choose to pass on a key nugget of wisdom - something that the current you knows that the younger you weren’t aware of.
But, taken literally, it’s yet another temporal paradox.
You made a bunch of decisions, took silly paths, made suboptimal choices, accrued wins, and got hurt to acquire this wisdom. But in passing this wisdom to your younger self aren’t you changing the trajectory of the younger you? If you expect the younger you to do things differently, the current you, with all this wisdom, would not be the same.
I have screamed at enough time travel TV shows and movies to know that when you are presented with a choice to mess with the past, you always say no and run away.
Annoying the younger you
There’s always the possibility you may end up annoying or disappointing the younger you. Imagine living for a decade being annoyed at a version that you will become eventually - a trippy relationship dynamic to live with.
It’s 2014. You wake up one morning, stressed about work, life, or family shit that’s happening at the moment, and see a note. It’s written on a sheet of paper and the handwriting looks like yours but worse, as if the person has now completely forgotten how to write.
“Hey little me, This is you from 2024. Isn’t this exciting! …”
You frown. The vibe is all wrong - you are all about gloomy aloofness and this person is over-the-top with summer cheer.
“…Anyway, it’s not all sunshine here. The ice caps are melting faster than ever. AI will probably take the jobs in another couple of years. And there’s still a lot of wars and stuff….”
You relax a bit. This is the you you know.
“…But, I (we) are doing great. Capitalism thrives in its last hurrah. But enough about all that and listen, I have one piece of advice for you…”
Beads of sweat trickle from your head and your fingers shake in anticipation. An incredible nugget from the future is going to change your life! You imagine standing on a podium, the whole Earth beneath you, worshipping your prescience. You continue reading…
“…and this is it: “Be confident in who you are!””
You stare dumbfounded. That’s it? You scream in frustration, tear the paper up, and decide that the older you sucks. Your annoyance is so great that you decide to change who you are to become someone who, when the time comes to send a message to the past, would send something useful.
The third possibility
You are special and you did indeed already talk to your older self 10 years back and this is what got you exactly on this path you were on. In which case, you are one hell of a secret keeper since you know time travel exists. Good job!
Can wisdom ever be taught and not experienced?
“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett
This thought exercise is not fully useless because it has a subtext - “What advice would you give your decade-younger self [which can be useful for other people today]?
It’s a way of saying - “What’s been your biggest learning over the last decade?”
Good old advice that others can put to use. But there’s still a hitch.
A big question - can wisdom ever be taught?
To be clear, humanity has always believed so. We have philosophies, sayings, and texts that are revered. We have prophets, sages, and thinkers who are repeated. The idea that you could capture wisdom, distill it into usage for mass consumption, and pass it down is always alluring.
But have we all acquired any more wisdom as a consequence of reading these things?
We all seem to be conditioned to repeat the same mistakes, fight the same battles, and dance the same tango until each of us learns through our journeys. We then connect back to all those nuggets and say, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.”
Knowledge isn’t wisdom
The Sophists in Greece engaged in rhetoric and used their oratorial powers to debate, question, and challenge things. They didn’t bother as much with seeking answers (or ‘truth’) but were more interested in winning public speaking debates. After assimilating data and memorizing information their objective was to persuade.
We’re all now Sophists online.
Both Socrates and Plato did not like Sophists. They contended that it was memory and not wisdom or reason that was being celebrated.
Knowing, therefore, isn’t necessarily wisdom. Knowledge could even make one closed off to wisdom that can be acquired through life.
On the other hand, there’s the modern philosophy of “fake it till you make it”. By listening to wisdom, you may even pretend like that’s guiding you (and faking it) until your actions and experiences change enough that the wisdom is guiding you.
This is the philosophy of all corporate principles. Fake it till you make it or at least till you get promoted. Colleagues in Amazon keep quoting “leadership principles” to justify their actions like modern-day Sophists. I wonder how many of them truly got the wisdom (I know, big word) of those principles?
But this is all semantics. All wisdom is taught, often by the most powerful teacher - time. So the question is can you beat time to acquire wisdom?
Like many real questions, I do not have an answer here.
Responses to the question
Back to the original question.
Here’s a list of responses from fifteen people, presented as-is and without too much additional commentary. I am adding one demographic tag here - gender because there is an interesting pattern between genders. Age ranges would also reveal interesting patterns but I was too lazy to pull them up.
Female
“Did not have to seek validation from anyone. Only my own opinion would matter”
“Find admirable traits in everyone and learn - the world is not a competition”
“You do you”
“Dreaming is not bad. Be more ambitious….”
“Strengthen your core!”
“No advice. Things work out eventually. Don’t be bogged down by anxiety”
“Don’t let your parents guilt trip you into decisions”
“Health. Start earlier with the workouts and slightly better eating”
Male
“Trust yourself and buy btc 😆”
“There’s enough time to do things you love”
“Take risks / Live a bit more dangerously 😀”
“Buy Bitcoin!”
“Eat healthier….reduce carbs…workout.”
“Invest in the stock market and buy Apple stocks”
“Find your strengths and work on it. Don’t try to copy everyone else”
While I will let you interpret and assimilate this the way you want, I cannot help spotting:
Two bitcoin advice and one stock market advice among the six males that responded
The overwhelming individual assertion/freedom/confidence advice among females
Both reflect in some ways the world we live in (for good or worse) and the journey of people across the two genders in trying to navigate it.
My advice for myself
I thought quite a bit about it. I considered the following:
Start working out more
Buy Bitcoin/apple, MS, Nvidia, etc.
Be more socially active (in the real world)
Eat healthier
Go live in Thailand! (I am semi-joking)
But then, everything made me think that in the process I might have missed something else that happened to me or made me who I am right now.
There was one thing I realized I could never get back and that would be a fair piece of advice,
“Spend more time with people you love” (especially those few that are no longer around that I miss)
Even that, for all the cheesy rightness of that statement I’d presume would not be all that different with the advice. Heck, I need to do that today too. Even this would come at the cost of something else and would I be sitting here regretting I did not do that thing instead? So, I guess the only proto statement I’d give myself is
“Remember: It could always be worse”
My younger self will be murderous.
Could be Worse,
Tyag
One more thing I forgot to add to tell my younger self:
"Elon musk is a complete asshole. Don't look up to that guy"
Well written, Tyagu. The road not taken or the decisions that could be undone, due to wisdom acquired earlier on, are interesting and intriguing speculations. I liked the paradox you described and that somehow reminded of the 12B movie. Enjoyed the read. Keep writing.