When I Was Young
When I was young, I was dumb (also, I started my business at 25, so you can imagine some of what that dumbness might have looked like).
I know I’m not alone. A lot of young people are dumb. Even those of us who have always been told we’re “more mature” than our peers because, as young people, we hadn’t the experience to know better.
I will never again fault or dismiss a young person for being young and dumb. Who I WILL fault are the ones who should know better. At a certain point, all young people come to a fork in the road to adulthood. In one direction is self-reflection and a desire to learn and be better than your past mistakes. In the other direction is the path that I imagine most adults that I have struggles to get along with must have unconsciously taken. It’s the path of imperiousness. That path is short. It stops just beyond the fork and looks out a window at stuff you’ve already seen. There’s no self-reflection, there’s no room for growth. Eventually, the folks who chose the other path will move on from these people’s lives because it’s draining to have to keep going back down that road to visit them. It’s hard to watch someone refuse to take responsibility for their own life, time after time. When comes the time where you start to wonder if it’s you?
It’s painful to watch someone you care about self-sabotage. I should know — I watched myself do it for a while until I found the strength to look my issues right in the face and deal with them. I’m not here to shame anyone, I know that self-growth is not linear and it’s NOT easy. It’s a choice we have to make every day because, let’s be real, it’s so easy to blame everyone else for your problems. It really is. Even if it’s not a person you’re blaming, maybe you blame the rigged system, or your upbringing, or some trauma that scarred you so deeply that it’s still painful to acknowledge. I would urge you to face it and free yourself from it. It’s so much easier to move forward once you can recognize that your reactions in any given situation are a product of your experiences, but they're not always right. If you can recognize that you might have been the asshole in some situations, you can STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE and do better.
At the end of the day, we are the only ones responsible for the outcome of our lives. If we don’t like the system, fight to change it. If your upbringing was messed up, do whatever you can to break that cycle. By ignoring it, we only perpetuate it. I know it sounds corny, but seriously, BE the change you want to see in the world.
I’ve learned that if you don’t know better, you can’t do better, and that lesson healed so many of my wounds. But in that lesson, I also recognize how many people I’ve encountered in my thirty-some years of life that have old wounds that still bleed on the people around them. We encounter them in various forms every single day.
Self-reflect, heal, no matter how long it takes you, just start the journey.
If you need help, I’m here for you with a few resources that have helped me heal and grow as a human. I’m no expert, and my journey of self-discovery is ongoing, the beauty is in being able to recognize that.
— ✌🏻❤️
Maxwell Salon, 2012