Once I was young.
Sometimes when I utter these words, I realize too late that the receiving person is older than me. I can be socially inept that way. People help me out, though, and tell me that I’m still young, and indeed, in their perspective, I might be.
But once I really was young and even back then, I wanted to write books. I secretly wanted to anyway; my official life plan was to become a physicist and do research in Theoretical Physics. That sounds much better coming from a 22-year old with big ambitions. But when I read my old diaries now, all I see is my periodical mentioning that writing books would give me a sense of purpose and freedom.
Yes, yes I know. What does a 20-something know about the struggle and toil of a writer? It might as well have been a romantic dream rather than a real passion for writing. But I would like to give my young self merit here. Earning a Master in Physics is quite a struggle and toilsome in its own way (and she got the degree).
My second dilemma with my secret dream was that, since I was so young, I clearly had nothing to tell the world that it didn’t already know? I remember the exact moment when I postponed my writing dreams.
At the time, I lived in Fontainebleau outside of Paris and attended a course in beginner’s French at Sorbonne in Paris. An often recurring routine was to go to my favorite restaurant to have a cup of coffee at the bar after coming home to Fontainebleau from school. The bartender became a friend, and in reality, I rarely had any coffee since I had gotten a taste for wine (Bourgogne, more specifically). After a few glasses, one can become quite philosophical. Having read a couple of biographies of Simone de Beauvoir before my moving to France, where she describes her path to become a writer, I often sat there at the bar, making notes of thoughts to be material for my work. It was more like a diary, in the end, but diary entries can also be good material for a book. Unfortunately, my drunken notes weren’t much of material, and instead of realizing that my method needed a change, I decided one day that I was too young to have anything wise to add to the world. Hence I postponed my writing career into the indefinite future and focused on much more important matters; to live and gain experience for that future dream.
I recently remembered this now long-buried dream after having some sort of life crisis (I hate this word, it’s not a crisis, it’s an evolution). At the same time, I started to read all my old diaries again and what I discovered is somewhat grievous.
The 22-year old living in France did, in reality, take excellent notes about meaningful thoughts and certainly of the sort one tends to oversee as age increases, and life becomes more of a puzzle than an adventure. What a waste then, that I didn’t fill all those years from then to now with more words, thoughts, and observations down onto paper.
I should make a promise to my younger self to try to salvage as much as I can of the old notes that I’ve kept and open them up to the world. Especially since the observations made of the youthful me are guiding me today in a very helpful way.
The not-crisis made me want to see life not as a puzzle anymore. Maybe not an adventure as it used to be either but as something enjoyable. Filling it with delights each day that one takes care to really experience, rather than chasing alot of “musts” and completing to-do lists . So I’m on a (mostly mental) journey where I am the driver. And the junior me who thought she had nothing worthwhile to share with the world is the one guiding me on this trip.