Face to face with my misspent youth
On Tuesday morning last I took the American Airlines flight from Boston to London. A daytime flight in first class is the most civilized mode of travel eastward from North America to Europe. After less than six hours, the plane arrives in London around 8.30 p.m., just in time for a late dinner, a few drinks, and a good night’s rest before the next day's work.
I met an old friend for dinner downstairs at the One Aldwych hotel. The meal was pleasant but unremarkable, and afterwards I sat in the hotel bar alone with a Singapore Sling (my current liquid favourite). Speaking to the young bartender, I discovered that he lived just across the street from my old flat in Willesden Green in north London.
If London is where dreams are realized, then a bedsit in Willesden Green is the place where you begin the dozing that comes before the dreaming. In January 1995, I had arrived wearing a thin raincoat, dragging a small suitcase with one broken wheel, and with three hundred dollars in my pocket to start life in London. In this young bartender, I saw the Ravi of ten years ago.
If we met a younger version of ourselves, how would we get on? There would be some curiosity. Perhaps we would ladle some advice to the youth with so much potential. But ultimately, we don’t want to know that person too well. We have long since scrubbed away the imperfections of the past in our minds, and only remember the hero that inhabits our body as a young man. Gouging the surface of this perfection with the realities of misspent youth, would disturb the fragile détente we have established with our heart.
This young man who will next weekend fly to Spain, drink too much and make an ass of himself at his friend’s apartment on the beach. This ignoramus who will spend the next five years working hard in a pointless job without reward, before realizing he should have moved to Wall Street to begin with. This shy youth who will not have the confidence to ask for a date the spring blushed girls who set his dreams ablaze. The hundred and eighteen things this young fool will learn the hard way, and which we could have sat him down and given him a list instead titled “Life’s great shortcuts”. No, it will simply not do to short circuit his life.
If you distill Hindu philosophy, the astonishing conclusion is that God is nothing but our future self. Consider that we are in a long cycle of birth, death and rebirth, striving to improve ourselves, until one day we reach Moksha (or release) and become one with God. It must then follow that the only thing that separates us from God is time.
Conversely, when God looks at humanity, he sees a young version of himself, with all the imperfections and incomplete knowledge and the struggle that is life.
In other words, coming into contact with our younger selves will bring us closer to God, because we then see the world as God sees it – imperfect, sometimes even cruel, but with infinite creativity and potential.
Perhaps this is why we must have children.
I met an old friend for dinner downstairs at the One Aldwych hotel. The meal was pleasant but unremarkable, and afterwards I sat in the hotel bar alone with a Singapore Sling (my current liquid favourite). Speaking to the young bartender, I discovered that he lived just across the street from my old flat in Willesden Green in north London.
If London is where dreams are realized, then a bedsit in Willesden Green is the place where you begin the dozing that comes before the dreaming. In January 1995, I had arrived wearing a thin raincoat, dragging a small suitcase with one broken wheel, and with three hundred dollars in my pocket to start life in London. In this young bartender, I saw the Ravi of ten years ago.
If we met a younger version of ourselves, how would we get on? There would be some curiosity. Perhaps we would ladle some advice to the youth with so much potential. But ultimately, we don’t want to know that person too well. We have long since scrubbed away the imperfections of the past in our minds, and only remember the hero that inhabits our body as a young man. Gouging the surface of this perfection with the realities of misspent youth, would disturb the fragile détente we have established with our heart.
This young man who will next weekend fly to Spain, drink too much and make an ass of himself at his friend’s apartment on the beach. This ignoramus who will spend the next five years working hard in a pointless job without reward, before realizing he should have moved to Wall Street to begin with. This shy youth who will not have the confidence to ask for a date the spring blushed girls who set his dreams ablaze. The hundred and eighteen things this young fool will learn the hard way, and which we could have sat him down and given him a list instead titled “Life’s great shortcuts”. No, it will simply not do to short circuit his life.
If you distill Hindu philosophy, the astonishing conclusion is that God is nothing but our future self. Consider that we are in a long cycle of birth, death and rebirth, striving to improve ourselves, until one day we reach Moksha (or release) and become one with God. It must then follow that the only thing that separates us from God is time.
Conversely, when God looks at humanity, he sees a young version of himself, with all the imperfections and incomplete knowledge and the struggle that is life.
In other words, coming into contact with our younger selves will bring us closer to God, because we then see the world as God sees it – imperfect, sometimes even cruel, but with infinite creativity and potential.
Perhaps this is why we must have children.
posted by Ravi Mantha at 7:42 AM
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