What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?

I struggle with this question because I could tell my twenty-year-old self far too much.

I could tell him which career opportunities to take and which to avoid. I could tell him which auditions, interviews and relationships mattered. I could tell him to spend more time with grandparents who would not be around forever and to make the effort to attend family occasions that later became impossible to recreate.

But every piece of advice would change the person who eventually emerged.

Perhaps the only thing I would tell him is this:

You do not have as much time as you think with the people you love, and you have more time than you think to build a career.

Careers twist and turn. Opportunities reappear in different forms. But grandparents turn eighty only once. Friends marry only once. Parents age. Childhood homes disappear.

I would tell him to worry a little less about getting life right and pay a little more attention to the people sharing it with him.

The rest, I suspect, he needs to discover for himself.

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