Letter to My Daughter 1

No title this week, just an introduction...

If someone offered me the chance to go back and be a teen again, of course I'd take it.  The only thing that would really give me pause about the decision would be thinking of how much I did not enjoy the politics of high school.

There were people who floated through every moment as if it were their own personal property, and there were people who felt that they were in an alien landscape that had to be navigated with great caution.  I was in the latter group.

I remember:

• ...getting it in my head that people were analyzing the way I was walking, then trying to fix it and walking like a goofy Steve Martin character.  It was embarrassing and beyond my control at that moment.  (That was in middle school.)
• ...telling a big,  athletic senior that it wouldn't be fair to previous bullies if I were to stop "smarting off" today.  I was a freshman and that got me my first broken nose.  That guy was a dick.
• ...making a horse-whinney-like noise when one of the cooler kids "deemed" to talk to me.  That guy wasn't a dick, but you should have seen the puzzled look on his face!  He actually responded, "Why are you making horse noises?"
• ...insisting to my parents that they were wrong about this or that specific thing.  Suzie used to think that stubbornness was my defining quality.  :)   I later sometimes learned that I was right and I later sometimes learned that I was wrong.  None of the details of those disagreements matter now.  I wish I'd invested a little time in trying to see those episodes as single small scenes from my long life.

[You might be suspecting that these letters have a hidden motive of manipulating you.  You are not wrong--except in that it's not hidden.  It would be nice if you got excited about these weekly letters and looked forward to each one's release, but it doesn't make a lot of difference.  I'm writing these so that you know everything that I know when I'm gone.  Hopefully that'll be far in the future, but (given my personal experience) I don't take that for granted.  And I know that you will look back on them fondly in the future!  If that's what's happening now, SMILE!  I love(d) you very much!]

[In case you have any doubt, I love you enough that I wrote two consecutive sentences with exclamation points--I've never done that before and I did it without hesitation for those two sentences!]

Anyway, the point of the list above was to say that I get that you're in a tough period of life.  It sometimes feels like you're alone, and that no one understands you, yada, yada, yada.  It's all normal-enough-to-be-a-cliche hormonal bullshit.  Easily dismissed by the author of a letter, but a pain in the ass to experience day-after-day.

"...But I'd Rather Light a Candle Than Curse Your Darkness."

Some things that might help:

1. Everyone has to go through this cultural dissonance that you're experiencing.  Many of the people who float effortlessly through high school without needing to struggle with how they fit into the larger world will have to face those difficulties later--and if you think it's difficult to figure these things out in high school, imagine how difficult it's going to be in college or in your family later.  Starting a family BEFORE doing all of that hard cultural work means that you are going to change into someone different after you've made strong commitments to the people who are important to you (spouse, kids, employers, etc.)  That kind of change can put a lot of extra stress on your relationships and that's one of the main reasons that high school relationships rarely work out--with kids being a complicating variable when extant.
2. "Discretion is the better part of valor."  This is an old saying that I've found to be true.  You don't have to engage in every disagreement that appears in your head.  As a teen, I remember feeling that I had a responsibility to fix anything that I heard that was incorrect (from my point of view).  That's not true.  Sometimes, you should feel a moral imperative to act, but other times, the smarter course of action is to realize that your input won't solve the problem--and sometimes it will just make it worse.  Not saying something that is true is a difficult thing to do, but wise people need to have that skill in their arsenal (at appropriate times) if they want to make real change in the world.
3. One column in this blog will be called "Tenets."  Each of those is designed to share the important lessons I've learned from life with you and your little Brother.  I hope that he will one day read these if I happen to be gone before he gets to his teen years.  If you find these to be beneficial, then I hope you (and your Mom) surrogate these ideas with him for me.  [I don't know if that sentence was entirely kosher, but I liked the rhythm of it.]
4. We've talked about this before, but it's a good idea to include it here:  If you think someone is interested in you (romantically), then you're almost assuredly correct.  Have some confidence in that and take some action to "get in the game"--or to "get out of the game" as the best course of action might be if someone has an unrequited love for you.  :)

This week's Challenge:

[...First of all, can I really come up with an interesting challenge every week?  We'll see.  I've got the time set aside and this one came pretty easily.]

This week's challenge is to do three things that you wouldn't normally do.  They can be important things or completely trivial things, but they cannot rely on chance--your words or actions must determine success or failure.  You must challenge yourself with a specific goal, then try to achieve that goal and report back to me about the three.  

I'd like to know, for each of the three:

• Describe the challenge you have chosen succinctly.
• How did it go?  Were you successful?  
• To what do you attribute your success or failure?
• Is there anything you would/could have done differently that might have improved the outcome?  This might include an option that you discarded or something that occurred to you after the fact.

I wonder if/when I'll get that report?  ;)

I'm hoping that at least one of the three was unsuccessful.  I have a lot of faith in you and your abilities--especially at influencing an unsuspecting "victim"--but making the experience of failure into something that is a comfortable part of your life is a crucial skill--and there's only one way to get it.  Hence this challenge.

If you don't want to do this challenge now, don't worry about it.  I'll wait.  Some day, you're going to be interested in reading these and I'll look forward to hearing from you then.

Remember that (literally) everything I say/do with you is designed to guide you to success and happiness in your future life.

I love and like you!

Bonus Link