A love letter to my naive, younger 2020 self:
My Dearest Wael,
Picture the end of 2019, when you were celebrating the end of a tough year and looking forward to a new one. A year where the only thing you knew about it was that it has a nice round synonymous number. Don’t fast forward yet, just savor the moment and imagine your youthful energy, your undeniable innocence, and your clear naivety. Did you have plans? Were you in a hurry? Did you think you were in control !! Did you think tomorrow will be the same? 2019 must have been tough and now that you have bottled out all the stress of this tough year, your optimistic self is looking forward to 2020. Deep down inside you hear a voice in your head saying that you never know but you fiercely deny it and move on to dream about a good year. Now fast forward while you continue to marvel about the hopes of 2021 and before you drown again in hopes and dreams that you have designed with military precision.
My dearest dumb Wael,
I would like to give you some lessons that you should always remember as you cruise on to 2021 with the same resolve that you had at the end of 2019.
Since you are the closet (both literally, physically, and emotionally to me) I have decided to send you some advice and learnings wrapped in a love letter dated a year ago!! if this sounds strange, don’t sweat dear Wael, imagine that I have traveled back in time with the wisdom that I have today and the love I have for you and sent you a letter to prepare you for 2020. Now sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, and remember that I love you like no one else in the world, so every word is coming from my heart:
1- The love of your life can be the crash of your life: This is simply because you have taken love for granted and thought it was a noun, anything in life my dear including love is a verb, an act, a move, a sign, a signal, a course. My most valuable lesson for you my dear is that nouns move and morph into verbs and that you have to move with them, nurture them and grow them, otherwise they crash. Sad but true, grow up and move your nouns.
2- The good news is that we suffer more in our imagination than in reality, so in reality, the suffering is not that hard. Everything starts and stops in your mind, but like our underwear, it gets dirty so try to change it every now and then. Unchanged underwear becomes dirty, and unchanged minds can be dirtier.
3- Everything is the same with or without your opinion, you can express it and be vocal about it but things, most important things will remain the same. If you want to change important things, you need more opinions all steering up in the same direction.
4- Success is very relative: I remember when I graduated back in 1989, my biggest aspirations in life were very different than now. Tame your success, guard it, enjoy it, dream more but put it in context because it’s super relative. It also comes with a tax. The more you want to be good at something the more you will need to pay taxes.
5- Stop sweating the small stuff: The minute you wake up thinking that the world owes you something, it will never happen, and when it happens you think you have earned it and you deserve more. Stop making a big fuss of small things that happen to you. You are so freaking blessed that you have survived 2020 (BITCH)
6- All experiences have value, good or bad !! especially bad. In fact, bad experiences have more value in both the shorter and medium term. It’s OK to have some bad experiences!! curse them, cry over them but don’t kill yourself that you have been dealt a few bad ones !! it’s normal dude !! You can’t simply kill everything
7- Just because something feels really important doesn’t necessarily mean it’s important or true. I know you are selfish and I love it because I am you, so I love the fact that you love yourself so badly because this means that you love me and I love myself too. But seriously, you are not that important in the grand scheme of this great big world. I know that you are the star of your movie but neither your movie nor your drama is important or true
8- Brutal Honesty: Look at your kids and yourself, look deeper !! How do you feel about their flaws !! You can’t find anything? You are willing to accept them? Then you love them and love yourself. This is the only measure of love. How do you feel about other people? whims, flaws, nonsense, and inconsistencies
9- To show my love to you here is your biggest flaw Wael: You are still so insecure about wanting stuff, you are still driven by this maniacal level of ambition and want for things. Even though you read all those books, and listen to all those lectures, there is something crazy still about you wanting stuff, owning things, achieving this, stretching that, beating him, kicking her. It’s so satisfying but it makes me fear for you about those wants and desires. I know that this will not go away soon but I hope it stabilizes a bit.
10- Stop looking for closures !! Somethings are better left open for different interpretations !!
11- Thinking is easy, acting is difficult: Move your ass instead of giving lessons about things, show us and show the world how you do it. The best advice in life was given by Teddie Roselevet “ It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles ….. etc.. etc.. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred with dust, blood, and sweat, who comes short again and again, etc… “ Move and stop talking
12- Here is something nice for you: The focus of your life has always been to be a good father. You are doing an OK job there. Keep it up
13- Be more uncomfortable about things!! It keeps you alive, don't be so certain all the time.
14- A lot of my friends don’t do what they love: Did you learn anything from 2020 for God’s sake !! Life is short so do the things that you love. If you don’t know what you love it’s ok, spend some time tinkering with stuff so that you know what you like, love, adore, and are crazy about. Drop everything in your life and do this thing, I beg you before it’s too late
15- All my friends are friends with benefits. Friends are so important to me and I work hard on keeping in touch with them but I exchange a lot of benefits — More on that later, I guess!
16- Even if you are in your 50’s you still have a lot of potential: There is a reason you are alive and when you die, you will know that your potential is gone. So please use your living years to explore and find your potential
17- As you get older, you feel that you don’t have to please the world anymore. This is true, you used to try to please everyone when you were young. The challenge here is that as you stop pleasing people, you should at least try to please one person: Yourself !! Be happy with your self … at least some of the time.
18- You are the average of the 5 people you spend your time with. Take stock of the people with whom you have spent your time during 2020. Put on a piece of paper the top 5 people that you have spent time with. What do you think of them? You are in there between all of them. Choose who you spend time with carefully. When I look at 2020, I feel that my average can be increased
19- Your top priority in your life is to try to be YOU and still be liked by both you and whomever you meet.
20- Pary more often you ungrateful son of a bitch !!
