September 20, 2019
Dear Eric,
I remember the person you once were. I wonder if you would have remained that person always if you'd lived longer than you did? Probably not. As, like the rest of us, your fortitude and constitution would have changed across the years. You would have become whatever your early will and determination largely won out as you on a daily basis from youth to death.
The battle of who we will become is always fought and won now. Never tomorrow. Never some years hence; it is always a matter of now, and of who we decide we are under the current challenge, fortune and circumstance.
I'd be the someone I want to be Today, If ever tomorrow
There is never any chance of becoming anyone other than who we are right now. Put it off another day and the distance between our current self and our imagined potential is one day further. For in youth our feign character is something less than play-acting; it is a more real type of pretend; it is the putting on of a costume of sorts - clothing and attitude that somehow nearly always fit. There is a magic to this endeavor when we are young and can wear and look right in almost any persona we choose to carry. This is because youth is malleable to its own will, and can bend or even safely break in the direction of its own effort. So, put on your new self early. Wear your best self while you are still young. Never mind any sense that this isn't really you...for you will soon be nothing else. But beware putting off the charade.
Don't delay even a day.
Waiting is death. For who we dream we are will die if we fail now to be that person. We will instead become the person we are. Always the person we are. Irrevocably the person we are. Never anything more than what we choose - or settle - to be.
Beware the not being.
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.