On Giving Advice to Your Younger Self

Sketch #6 from my graphic novel

One question I get a lot is “what advice would you give your younger self?”

It’s a question I deserve. I do, after all, claim to be “an advice columnist.” I understand the question’s appeal: It’s a lovely, heartwarming illustration. The wiser, older self bends down to comfort the younger, naive self, the inner child.

I’ve answered it many different ways over time. I’d tell him to hang in there. I’d tell him he’s going to find his people one day. I’d tell him to care less about what other people think. And so on, and so forth.

There’s nothing wrong with the question, but I’ve always been curious in exploring why it makes me feel a bit iffy, or why every answer I give feels like a lie in my mouth. Perhaps it’s because, well, you can’t give advice to your younger self. That’s not a thing you can do without seriously damaging the delicate balance of the universe. I would hate to cause a rip in the spacetime continuum just to tell my former self “you’re gay.”

Or would I?

Regardless, while I haven’t come up with a satisfying explanation for my gut feeling, pondering it has revealed some interesting ideas. One of them is that wisdom isn’t linear. It’s entirely possible that we, as dynamic creatures, hold on to certain wisdoms at certain times to get through life, and we later forget them or shuffle them out in favor of new ones of greater utility. They stop serving us, or we shift our beliefs, or our lifestyle can no longer accommodate them.