A letter to myself

Dear Ryan,

I'm writing this letter because you seem to be adrift, lost, in desperate need of some encouragement, advice, chastisement, and even, more fundamentally, company. You seem unsatisfied with the words and actions of others, and so, since I have some unique insight and stake in the matter, I will give it a try.

It's time for you to speak plainly, and be spoken plainly to.

Here is where you are: you are with your back to your wall, emotionally, intellectually, physically, professionally, socially, and financially. There is nowhere to run, no more lies to tell yourself or others. You have failed to run from life, and now life has come to find you.


What you do next will be as telling as anything you've done in the last seven years; indeed, it will be used to help others understand and interpret your past actions and inactions.

This letter will not be a kick in the ass or a slap to the face.Maybe you're looking for that negative reinforcement - maybe that's the only sort of care and concern you recognize and value. It would demonstrate emotional investment by another person in you.

But the likely result will be a reactionary mindset, a temperament built on responding to stimulus, instead of planning for and executing my own destiny. Bullying yourself hasn't gotten you anywhere, and you've fought and beat naysayers your entire life.

The common theme among the content and moderately successful individuals I have met - successful by so many metrics, but definitely by their own - is the ability to move beyond selfishness and live for something more. For some, it's God. For some, it's Country. Many try to live for Love, but few enough succeed. But all gave up the luxury and fiction of sole importance.

You have not. You have changed your geography, educational status, and professed professional goals. But ultimately, you haven't been willing to give this up.

Case in point - in your 26 years of life, you haven't really had a girlfriend. You haven't really tried very hard, either. A significant other doesn't translate into a significant life. But it is a bit curious - unusual, if not necessarily bad in itself.

It's not that you lack a modicum of good looks, wit, charm, and grace, all alleged to be good qualities in a boyfriend. And God knows you've met enough fuck-ups who are in relationships to know that they aren't prerequisites. But the obsession with self, which ultimately leads to a hatred of self, blinds you of what you could build in this world with others, and perhaps, one special Other.

Let's venture another proposition. You let yourself be defined solely by your academic achievement and alleged brain power. In the face of alternative ways of viewing the world, or even contravening evidence, you maintained a facade of being somehow extraordinary by simply being. When that failed, your ego and identity collapsed.

I tell you truly, you forgot that resting on laurels, deserved or not, is completely antithetical to what you respect. Furthermore, the measure of a man is what is done, what is said, what is loved, and not properties divorced from a living, dynamic, and complicated world of other people.

You cannot replace one lie with another and expect rapid improvement. So you are no longer the golden child of your family, the wunderkind of Rosemead, someone who seemed blessed with the mind and soul of Einstein.

But you never were.

Similarly, though you have done your best to bring it about, you will never be a worthless idiot.

Yes, you have sabotaged your career, your finances, your very mind through blunt instruments of mindless tedium and a semi-conscious exile from the people of earlier times. But even as you have ceded your judgment and sense, you retain a mind capable of rational analysis, a heart not too easily swayed by violent swings in either anger, joy, or sorrow. The world still has need of someone like you, of your temperament, background, insight, and, perhaps, courage. You gain nothing by further missteps, and those who love you and need you will suffer for any ill-fated attempts at metaphorical self-immolation. Martyrs need a cause, and you have none.

There are no stochastic rises or falls in fortune. Not for you, and not for those you have known. Your family history is filled with stories of valor and tragedy. Your grandfather fought and triumphed over his demons and the vicissitudes of war. Your father succumbed to the arrogance that comes with a rapid rise and a chip on your shoulder, and found peace only after he lost everything. Little enough can be controlled, and less predicted.

Yet you are still master of your own ship, if not of the sea and the wind. There are themes to notice, processes to learn and incorporate, and an awareness of potential problems and opportunities to cultivate. And you are no longer a child; no matter how far you run, you have a responsibility to this world, to those you share it with, and to yourself.

Remember your training. You have been trained to look at complicated problems, to break them down piece by piece, to respect the limits of knowledge without accepting that they are eternally insurmountable, and to know that some problems do not have optimal solutions, or solutions at all. They simply have various degrees of responses and resulting consequences.

Remember your character. At one time you held yourself to be a scientist and a Christian. Each carries special responsibilities; each is strict in its standards. Your goal was moral courage, not moral perfection, and you possessed judgment without passing it.

And most of all, remember those you love and live for. They are your last, best guard against excesses that would destroy you. They are your counselors, philosophers, and friends. They do not always offer words, or love on your terms. But recognize it for what it is. They are worth a hundred Eisenhowers, a hundred Marshalls, because they live, because they yet change themselves and their surroundings through the many small acts of courage that constitute a day lived. They will teach you more about yourself and life than the dusty books you scan desperately for some way out of your predicament. Let them in and bury your fears - that's the one battle that has yet to be joined, and the one battle you must win.

Remember these things. Recognize how your goals and opportunities have changed. But do not give up on that which was, simply because there is enough good there worth salvaging that it's worth the hard work of sifting and incremental improvement. It is hard work, harder than anything you may have known. It's your life's work. There's no way to know how it will turn out.

But just by trying, by really, really trying, and working, and not giving up on yourself, you will respect yourself more, and be respected more, than at any other time in your life. You will finally be worthy of whatever it is you've sought, for so many years, with driving insecurity and speechless rage.

Best wishes,

Ryan