What Advice Would You Give to the 20-Year-Old YOU?

Maybe a few years ago, this same question came up. I gave it more thought than I did earlier in this thread.

If (by some miracle) I could really go back in time and talk to my 20 year old self...I wouldn't do it.

It's not that I wouldn't listen, it's that I know I would.

And my life would not unroll in the same way at all.

I'm 66, reasonably wealthy, in a loving marriage, in a beautiful home, doing what I want for a living.

Let's say I told my younger self not to marry my first wife (advice that would better my life). Then what? Who would I end up with? Where would I be living? Who would I be meeting along the way?

A short meeting with my older self wouldn't give me a daily plan for the rest of my life. I would still make stupid...20 year old type...mistakes.

Even if I saved myself from a few mistakes, I would make different mistakes that would steer my life in an unknown way.

I could die in any number of accidents, become an alcoholic, a drug addict, a homeless person. If I walked into the wrong bar, started the wrong argument, made the wrong friends...it would be much worse than it was.

How would I guarantee that I would eventually meet and marry my current wife? I couldn't. A smart ass remark on the first date could end it all. Seeing her a week earlier, or under different circumstances...and it wouldn't go anywhere.

There are only a few ways my life could be better, and at this time, none of them are that important.

But a few simple changes at 20 years old, even for the better, would set me on a course that may end up way way worse than now.

I think I would pass on the offer.

I have a similar answer but I think I actually ignored attempts from older me to give advice.

If I was 20 today I would probably have been heavily medicated in high school. Maybe my high functioning autism would have been detected and worked around. And I may have learned to spell. .

Enough men have married her that there is a support group.

I read where a $100 investment in Bitcoin back in 2010 would be worth $48 million dollars today if you held
on to it

I would say probably zero held on for that long. I know if I invested $100 back then I probably would have cashed out once it hit a couple thousand bucks

So you would gladly live in the Cold War era with the threat of nuclear destruction. Over population. And at the time the thought there would be mass starvation because we could not grow enough food. HIV aids oil shocks and the drug wars. Of the1980

And much of the world was no where near as friendly as now..

The pandemic is running it's course and the dominant strain is now the less deadly strain and the supply chain issue may take a few years to clear but they will clear.

The richest person in the capitalist world is getting wealthy building technology that will help solve global warming. And the pandemic may cause the population to peak before 9 billion and China's population may already be dropping.

The actual problem now is the world is at the end of 500 years of continuous .

Now is the best time ever to be alive so far although the coming cascading collapse of fiat currency that will leave the US dollar as the last standing will be terrifying

That confidence and swagger without the knowledge that built it would make me an even more insufferable asshole than I actually was. I can only imagine the arguments I would have with professors then.

But would I do it?

No. The decisions I would make would lead me down a road that would cause my son to never happen. And he makes the world a better place (and me a little bit less of an asshole).

I know this is just a thought experiment, but - if you have no memory or knowledge of the transition, any extra confidence would be ill-founded because it would have no context. You can't be worldly without actual - and mentally retrievable -world experience.

You're getting there my young grasshopper, you're getting there