A Cup of Tea with Your Younger Self

Imagine you were to meet your younger self at your local cafe.

You see that fresh faced 20 year old walking through the door, they nervously glance around for you and smile shyly as they slide down into the uncomfortable steel chair opposite you. 

Close your eyes and visualise them sitting opposite you. Tune into their energy, they are familiar yet they are different to you. They wrap their thin arms around themselves, they have stepped in from a cold November day, their hoody sits loosely surrounding their face, they look at you all bright eyed yet awkward and struggling to make eye contact. You offer them sweet chai and a selection of weird milks to choose from, they laugh and say ‘no thanks, what’s chai ?  I don’t drink that, i'll just have normal ‘Barrys tea’.

They are wearing wide blue jeans and the ends are dirty like as if they walked through muddly puddles to meet you. Their eye brows are over plucked and their freckles stand out against their unblemished, unwrinkled pale skin. 

‘So’ ………… you say .

What’s your dream in life ? 

“Well I love fish and water and so I am studying aquatic science

I’d love to be a mother some day

I’m obsessed with Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and would love to see Uluru in Australia and the Great Barrier Reef.

I’m not the smartest student but I can work hard when I need to.

I’m very quiet and only really speak when I am spoken to, I don’t share my opinion much.

I love music and have lots of mix tapes and cds, I’m always broke and live on pot noodles, I have phone anxiety and I would rather not answer the door. I hate speaking up.

I love dogs.

Dogs make me happy. I cannot wait until I have my own dog.

Id’ love to be able to paint pictures, but I write stories and poems, I don’t show them to anybody. They can be very dark and full of self loathing. I am ashamed of them. 

I love nature, I love the summer, I hate wearing shoes and I hate wearing jumpers. I get lonely sometimes, I feel as if nobody cares. I’m told I am weird. I like to laugh though, I can get in trouble for laughing in class. 

I love creating and I love spending time at home, redesigning my bedroom, sometimes I draw on the walls. I can cry easily and I think people see me as weak. I’m labelled the quiet one, I hate this. Does that make me sound boring ? I have good friends, I just don’t have a lot of friends, I love children and animals. I can be moody, very dark and depressive at times or that’s how I feel I can be perceived.

I’d love to be an artist of some sort but I don’t know how I can do this’. 

Your hair stands on end when they tell you all the things they love, all the things they secretly wish for, all their insecurities. You realise how much you had to shed, how much you had to push through. You followed a path that was invisible yet it was laid out, like the ‘red car effect’, your vision leads you to the next red car. You were not even conscious but something within you or above you or greater then you was and is very much wide awake.  

If you think back to that young person would they be blown away by where life has taken them?

What did you yearn for even 5 years ago and now just like that it's there, you made it.

But have you stopped to savour the sweet fruits of your labour? 

Have you thanked yourself for the vision, determination and self-belief?

Seven years ago did you wish for what you have right now ?

Are you content now or do you think you will be content in the future ?

Because if it is not now you will forever feel like a failure.

If its not now then you need to make a change even if its the hardest thing you might ever do. If you surrender and trust that it all will work out.

Even that 20 year old could go back to her 10 year old self and say, hey remember that goldfish you were given and you stared into the bowl at this fish swimming around and around ? 

Well ………………………………………. that goldfish brought you to Australia and you fell asleep on top of Uluru and you have two incredible children and you live 5 minutes from the Indian Ocean and you followed the fish your whole life.

Even though your life may be completely different than the one that society made you think you needed. You have been led to where you are meant to be. But the more we go where the doors open, the more that we listen to the whisperings deep within our hearts the more fulfilled we will be, to the point where your younger self would jump for joy. Stay in the moment and find the gratitude for the now. The red cars or as Matthew McConaughey says the ‘Green lights’ or Micheal Singer in ‘The Surrender Experiment’ trust and surrender so that the invisible path will lead you.