I see myself sitting on a bench. It is late fall with wet snow on the ground. It is cool outside but the sun shines with a warmth. I am 21 and it is 1990. I am sitting here on a break from my college painting class. I am discovering and exploring how to let the inner chatter go. I am struggling with emotional insecurity. Probably from an ex-girlfriend. There is a struggle to arrange my thoughts and my emotions. As if I’m looking through an open doorway, I see myself sitting on this bench. So I step through and sit down with myself, and then whisper to myself, “see the things come in one ear, pass through your head, and exit the other ear. Release the things up and away to the light.”
There’s a paradox here. I go back and give myself advice and inspiration which is a seed planted for who I am today, where I am now in a place and position and state to go back and give myself inspiration. Then again, maybe time isn’t quite as defined as I want to think.
Now, when I find myself in challenging situations, and inspiration and intuition arrives, I have to wonder if maybe it is me who is giving myself support. Maybe it is me from the future who has come back , just as I go back and help a previous me.
And just maybe, next time I have a talk with my younger self, I will ask him if he has any advice for me. This “talking to myself” should go both ways.
This is my journey,
— Nate Long “Owl”