Heed This Counsel, Young and Foolish

Daily writing prompt

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

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The best advice I’d give to someone younger than myself? Let me analyze that question in the way an AI/LLM chatbot might: 

That contraction, “I’d” is doing some heavy lifting here. You might take that to mean “I would if I were able.” or “I would if I were given the opportunity.”

I am able. I can speak the folk-wisdom that we, the aged, have acquired the hard way: by living it. You might believe that I also have the opportunity because I am in close proximity to young people every day. 

Unfortunately, my willingness and ability to transmit such advice do not equate to the willingness or ability of young people to receive it. Have you never said to yourself “Why didn’t I listen when they told me …”? Young people are seemingly incapable of receiving wise counsel.

All of that being said, I would give this advice to all persons younger than myself: Don’t wait. Tomorrow always seems more opportune than today, until tomorrow is today and eventually, yesterday. Prepare wisely and act immediately. The “here and now” is itself, quite literally, here and now. It does not fade gracefully into the “there and then”. It decays bitterly into “Lost and Gone”.

There’s a reason we have so many proverbs advising against procrastination, like “Make hay while the sun shines” or “Don’t put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.”

Now, all my dreams are but memories and all the opportunities I let slip past have metastasized into regret. This is the inevitability of age. and the young are incapable of heeding such simple advice.