Letter to My Past Self
Greetings!
Not remotely may it surprise you to learn that your future self remains as opposed to homiletics as you presently are. To date, I do not view myself as having sufficiently matured so as to serve as a guiding beacon to anyone. In more ways than you may care to admit, your temperament is redolent of that of mother, and you are therefore not profligate with regard to your time or priorities. You are the unfortunate object of no such attractions and distractions as allure your other friends — a merit you owe solely to your mother’s inculcation of discipline. That she rarely if ever subjected you to physical punishment bears testimony to her satisfaction with who you are as a person.
She shall not admit as much overtly; her recurrent complaints to father concerning you are likely more a sense of vexation that your conduct could border perfection, but that you are not in its vicinity. Overlook her frequent rebukes to you when it is your younger brother who ought to bear the blame; she could not possibly have imagined the kind of punishments for you that she metes out to your younger brother today.
Yet, grateful to her undeniably successful part in your life as a mother though you must be, you must develop prudence enough to discern such moments wherein her disciplinarian demeanour may morph into unreasonable control. Her insistence on enrolling you into tuitions from grades seventh to tenth is very much founded in fact — never do you seem to have a cogent study plan in the face of examinations. However, her insistence on enrolling you into coaching classes for IIT-JEE shall be erroneous. Save for a day or two, there shall not be a single lecture that you would cherish; there shall not a single event in those classes that could possibly have a positive impact on you, other than perhaps enforcing your mental endurance to a certain degree. It is only those other two tuition classes that would essay a positive role in your academic life.
Your life in eleventh and twelfth grades shall be unabatedly arduous. Much of this stress, however, is not needed in the slightest. School shall prove largely unproductive; there would be very few days which you would cherish. Those days which you shall cherish would be characterized by healthy problem-solving competition with your friends; a phenomenon far more common in eighth, ninth and tenth grades. You would feel pride at having solved textbook exercises, as instructed by the mathematics teachers, much faster than the rest of the class. Yet, these days shall be few and far between. Long hours of metaphorical submergence into your textbooks shall lead you to be greatly bored in class, often if not always longing for more sleep.
You would, for the first time in your academic life, fail in a subject. Chemistry: 19/70. Grade: eleventh. You shall fight hard — successfully — to hold back tears. Yet, this experience would pale in comparison with your life in twelfth grade. As the stress accrues, you shall become a vitriolic person. This vitriol shall peak in end 2016 and would subsist until your board examinations end in May 2017. Prepare for extreme stress. You shall fail two subjects in your first pre-boards in December 2016. So soon as you convalesce from the resultant gloom, mother shall pass away, collapsing in your presence. Your life is already lugubrious; that scene shall not haunt you, but your younger brother shall become irritable in time. Seeing you dethroned from the high table of academically performing students, most of your school friends shall desert you. You shall fail one subject in your second pre-boards in January 2017.
You would curse the education system aplenty; you would call for the murders of the HRD Minister and the CBSE chairman aplenty out of unrestrained spite. You would often feel like ripping your books apart and consigning the shreds to the flames of hell. You would discover Quora, and use it to vent your ire against the world. The thoughts of suicide shall often cross your mind, but you would not attempt it for fear of failing and being handicapped. I as your future self do not blame you for these sentiments at all. I only regard some of the objects of your ire as undeserving of it.
Unwisely, you shall choose to enroll yourself in a Bachelors of Technology programme in Computer Science, only to discover two years thereafter that you were simply never resonant with the field. This, I spiritedly insist, is a bad decision, for this shall entail separation from your family at a sensitive time. You shall return indeed, but things may never be the same. Your brother shall morph into a ready disappointment, academically and temperamentally. He may well need your help in studies. Do not leave! You? You shall be far more lonesome than you anticipate. Nothing remotely fruitful would emerge from this experience, save for some moments of positivity courtesy of a few friends.
Now that I have narrated the quagmire you shall find yourself in, you might choose a different path in life. You have already found of assistance the philosophy of hoping for the best, preparing for the worst, and expecting either the worst or nothing at all, for disappointment would then not overwhelm you and the delight of success would be worth remembering. Accordingly, I need not emphasize much the point that even an alternate path shall pose you a different set of struggles, none of which I could vaticinate. I can only advise forbearance.
It shall be deeply unsettling to lose friends in your housing society that you grew up with and played with for over a decade. Conceivably, your demeanour shall appear as somewhat abrasive. They shall distance themselves from you. Not for two years at bare minimum would there be a word. With only one of them shall you maintain contact, but you could assuredly not imagine your life without that contact.
Do cultivate a habit of reading. There is much more to read other than Hardy Boys mysteries. Reading is indispensable to the cultivation of a fine mind, and you may be glad to hear that you shall discover this for yourself. Not that I as an obscure creature from 2021 could ever feign any fineness of mind. It just so happens that reading serves to makes conversations about assorted topics fruitful in ways you cannot anticipate.
In many ways, I have not changed. I yet find ludicrous the proposition that life is beautiful. The buoyant messages on the family WhatsApp group yet appear to me devoid of worth. I yet find ineffable merit in being self-critical — ineffable because it resonates with me in a manner I cannot rationally describe. I yet have very few friends. I am yet not confident about my future.
Apologies if I have been of little help, which I suspect would be your sentiment. You are looking for a panacea — that one approach, that one method, which may reorient you. You shall discover for yourself the inexistence of any such panacea.
Lastly: do write. On Quora. On blogs. It shall often prove calmative.
Regards.
