Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
Shit did happen and look where it got you Just look where you’re at. Batting 100 and counting.
Never thought it did you? Never particularly wanted it either I know. But shit happens. Remember the time you tried to kill yourself back in your earliest 20s and woke up screaming at the Doctor in A&E to get the **!!!** tubing out your mouth. Remember accusing him of trying to kill you with that thing? You were always a bit of an -^^- as most people will certify.
Anyways you are still around and perhaps quite a few of your age peers (or is it peerage?) are gone. Bet you miss them. Bet you can’t remember some of them. Bet you wonder why in God’s name you had to be me and not some fabulously rich thrill-seeking business-owning healthy world-class dancer or model with never a real problem. Instead you got me, the too-serious, too-straight, too-sensible fun-loving but not daring person. What a laugh. At least you knew how to be happy, and enjoyed some really special moments.
Remember when a guy tried to rape you when you were a young teen? Remember what happened to him? Remember how it took you all of a week or less to shrug off the unreal shame some tried to project on to you? And you on yourself? Remember passing your exam with a flourish that term and strutting your determined way from school to playground to sports club? Remember getting blamed and punished for something one of our cousins did? Remember how that felt?
Remember the great days, the great shows? Remember the laughter? Remember the pain and tears when things went belly-up at the end?
Shit happens. Hope that now you’ve hit the grand 100 you’ll finish break the mold as you’ve been trying to do for the past 50 or so years, and finally be the you that is in you. You know, the one you were always itching to be, the one you would have created for yourself, the one that, in fact, would be more of a risk-taker, the one so contrary to your nature that your mouth sort of drops in admiration. Not the one you truly are. Not the me that at 100 is still hoping to do a bungee jump or take a ride in a jet-pack. Not the me that at 100 STILL has a flaming Bucket List!!
Get a move on for chrissees sake. Think you have another 100 in you or what?
Even if you do, remember that shit happens. The rockets fell and the meteors struck and other stuff wreaked havoc, but you are still around.
The bits of modified turkey and vaccinated chickens go well with the cloned sheep that your AI cook prepares to augment the laboratory grown vegetables, which is probably why you dont need a zimmerframe and still have all your teeth. Be thankful.
You should not lament that there is no real fish and no beef, and that soup is the new water as water must be mixed and churned like milk (remember milk?) with those chemicals and processed clay tablets so you can go collect your monthly quota in a mushroom leather pouch. At 100 it may seem that there is still so much to do, but there is no reason to; it is just the workings of a lively intelligent mind…a mere conceptualization – like the me that you wanted to be.
Shit Happens. So what?