The Priority Rationalization

I wrote a letter to my future self when I was 16. That was 10 years ago (Lord have mercy). On the scented piece of paper with glitter-drawn lines, in my best calligraphy imitation, I wrote:

Dear Future Vonnie,

I hope you opened this letter with your gold-plated opener and are now reading this from your New York penthouse. If that’s not what’s happening, that’s okay – there was about an 85% chance you would end up just being a completely normal human being in Africa with taxes and real problems.

Why am I writing you this? Well, besides having a ridiculous amount of time on my hands, I apparently have some wisdom to impart.

Even if your life doesn’t turn out like a Jane Austen storyline, just remember you can write yourself into an incredibly funny novel, in which you are not only devoid of all feelings and emotions but are also unbelievably smart and so obviously Halle Berry’s younger, better looking sister.

P.S If you’re not already, you should start going to gym and work on that upper body strength. You can barely lift a grapefruit. Oh, also remember that your heart is like the three-year-old that doesn’t listen when told not to put the steak knife in its mouth. So do the grown up thing and ignore it because I’m pretty sure there is no time you will not get cut. I mean, you could do it anyway, but I have no doubt you will regret it every single time – they don’t make band aids for that.

Sincerely,

Your (hopefully insightful) younger self

I found this letter the other day, in the back of my copy of Mansfield Park – my most read Jane Austen novel at the time. (Just by the way, I was wrong about my upper body strength. I’m basically superman from the waist up.)

Besides guffawing at my completely delusional idea of ever passing for Halle Berry’s younger sister, after finding the letter, I remembered that there’s a book I’ve been meaning to read.  Someone recommended it to me a couple of times, and then eventually gave me a copy of the book to make sure I read it. That was about 8 months ago. I still say I’m going to read it. Have I been too busy taking yacht vacations, travelling the world or maybe even writing my own novel to pick up a book in the last 8 months? No. I have not. In fact, I’m a book whore – I can go through about four books in a month when it’s peak nerd time, because apparently I feel that the glasses and small feet don’t make a big enough dent on the geek-o-meter.

Bookworms unite.

So why haven’t I read it? Well, because it hasn’t been in any way a priority for me. It has just been one of many options that I had at my disposal – an option which as far as I was concerned, could wait a while longer before becoming an actual priority. Naturally, this person has asked me every month if I have gotten around to reading their recommendation, and each time I have to give some lame excuse about meaning to get to it or being so swamped with spring cleaning and washing my hair that I keep forgetting to get started. I can only imagine how offended and slighted they have felt because of my lack of consideration.

In fact, better than imagine, I can think of times when I have actually been that recommended book. I, in all my wonderful quirkiness, have been one of many options and in no way a priority to another human being. Sound familiar?

What my younger self had to say is somewhat true. The heart is a petulant child. It sees something it wants and ignores all warning signs for it to stay away from what will likely hurt it. One of the common things this petulant child refuses to do, is acknowledge when it does not take precedence to another person. There is no real human who can claim not to want to feel important to another human that is important to them or that is becoming important to them. So we make excuses, justify bad behaviour and tolerate codswallop because it’s cleverly disguised in charm, flattery and smarminess.

This is something that I and many people I know, have continuously struggled with, simply because of how difficult it is to accept that the person you would jump in front of a train for would probably look at your mangled body and go, “Wait, what’s your name again?”

Even Kanye would be weakened.

I had a conversation with someone who insisted that being vulnerable with another human being is never a good idea because it makes you weak and puts your happiness in someone else’s hands. While I don’t fully agree with this philosophy, the very definition of being vulnerable means leaving yourself exposed, facing the potential of getting hurt. (Yes, we’ve all heard it before, tell us something we don’t know, right?) But I argued that when it comes to matters of the heart, we have to decide who is worth taking that vulnerability risk for and then once we make that decision, we have to simply accept that we may be wrong at the end of the day (one of those annoying things about being a responsible human).

The truth is I could have read the book the week it was given to me, if it had been something I felt particularly strongly about. But I didn’t. In fact, I did pretty much everything else. And the constant asking about whether or not I had read it, was a clear indication of a hidden hope that eventually I would recognise how worth it it would be to read that book. Misguided hope, I believe, is the reason we put knives in our mouths and get cut. My younger self may not have had original words of wisdom, but at least I understood science.

That’s just it, with misguided hope comes the belief that if we stick around long enough, they will see our worth and we will move from being options to priorities. Simple enough. But also stupid enough. Everyone can attest to the fact that we work hard for the things we want. Looking to get a distinction for your next exam? You study, you study hard. Aiming to buy a house at the end of the year? You’re frugal, you save. Trying to get a promotion? You grind till the cock crows. I think you get the drift…You shouldn’t have to try so hard to convince another person that you are worth the effort, that you are worth being a priority – they should be able to see it, simply because you are. Want to know if you’re important to them? Think about it this way: are you the chicken casserole or the decorative parsley?

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

-Maya Angelou

This thought  brought me to what Mya Angelou said about refusing to be reduced by the things that happen to you. Realising how little you mean to a person that is significant in your life can feel like eating an entire set of steak knives. So often people start asking the questions, “What is so wrong with me?”, “What more would make me worth the effort?”, “What could I have done differently to make them appreciate me?”  The answers? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We choose how to prioritise, we make conscious choices about what to put in the effort for; and it’s just unfortunate when our choices don’t coincide with the choices of others.

As a result, we have even more decisions to make once we realise the truth. We can either be reduced to sad, insecure messes, or take away a couple of lessons about making better choices. Living a life in regret is neither fun nor healthy, but what makes that worse is living your life believing that simply being who you are is not enough. That belief will leave you reaching for spaceships and life on other planets.

Sometimes it’s okay to simply accept that your particular genre of book was not one that specific reader was truly able to appreciate.

I had to secretly give my younger self a pat on the back for actually having some interesting (and applicable) words of wisdom. Humble pie, anyone? Also, I might be a fortune teller because I am very much a normal human being in Africa with taxes and real problems. So I decided to write myself a reply (because, what else do you with a letter addressed to you?):

Dear younger, incredibly impressionable Vonnie,

I hate to disappoint you, but you did not open the letter in your New York penthouse and I’m pretty sure you used your pinky finger to rip it open and now have a paper cut.

No, your life has not up until this point followed a Jane Austen narrative. Well I suppose it has, you’re probably just still in the middle of the storyline where life is increasingly difficult and the heroine is still struggling with pride, cynicism, insensibility and is insistent on playing cupid for everyone in her life. You are however, in Africa, dealing with real problems. So well done – your estimations were basically accurate.

Your upper body strength is weird now, people even talk about it. Well, you think they should because you’re pretty strong for your size. However, you have come to the realisation that even in a novel you could never be Halle Berry’s younger, better looking sister. But that’s okay, you’re still trying to write yourself into one that will make other people laugh – or at least snicker a little.

P.S We don’t purposefully eat steak knives. Well, normal non-masochistic people don’t. We take risks and sometimes they don’t pay off. Sometimes we’re disappointed and other times we want to purposefully stab people in the face with the knives. And although they don’t make band aids for that kind of cut, it still heals. We just often don’t know it’s healed until we simply don’t feel the pain anymore. (Also, your shoe size will never, ever change.)

 Sincerely,

Your (hopefully wiser) older self