I stumbled across a post on Substack the other day, (can’t find it again for the life of me), which challenged commenters to come up with three words that they would tell their younger selves if they were transported back in time to when they were 18 years old. The comments were about as asinine as you would expect, with the majority either being airy fairy airhead shit such as, “you are awesome” or attempts to try and make as much money as possible. Examples included, “Buy Bitcoin immediately”, “Amazon, Google, Nvidia”, and others of the same sort.
There were also some truly deranged misandrists who took the three word maximum and extended it to full paragraph rants on how all men are evil and must be executed right now. Takes all types I suppose.
I was 18 in 1989, so I would be tempted to tell my younger self to do his best to eliminate all proponents of multiculturalism. The money angle is tempting of course, I won’t deny it. But so is the question of women.
I grew up in an era of promiscuity, whereas my parents did not. Generation X was right on the cusp, and as such our parents were completely ill equipped to guide us in any way. There was a complete absence of any type of effort to guide us as regards to sexual morals. This had extremely negative consequences for both women and men. I myself behaved in ways that should have caused me to feel shame and disappointment. With that in mind, perhaps I would have told my younger self, “no sexual immorality.”
I very much doubt I would have listened.
But all of this pales into insignificance compared to God. Without a doubt if I could have the opportunity to say three words to my 18 year old self then the conversation would go as follows: “Jesus is real.” If it worked then that would go a long way to helping me with the sexual immorality part.
In the thread that I mentioned earlier, among the hundreds of replies I only saw a single one allude to God. The comment was, “Go to church”. The priorities today have not changed for the better since I was an 18 year old ignoramus. I suppose if either of my grandfathers were alive today to see the rotting carcass that is the West, and given the chance to go back in time when they were 18, they would probably say, “Don’t join up.”
But then they would have missed all of the fun. And I suppose that my path to God is just that, a path that I have needed to take. The lessons and the sins while regrettable have ultimately brought me to where I am today. So if given the chance, perhaps I wouldn’t say anything at all. Just ponder my younger self with exasperated pity.
And tell him to buy Bitcoin. Like, durr, obviously.
You can find Adam Piggott at Substack, and purchase his books here.
