Prompt: If your younger self asked you for advice today
My younger self wouldn’t sit down to ask me questions.
She had no patience for that.
She would shout them from the doorway while already halfway into something else. So I would tell her to go make me a cup of tea.
And while the water boils, she would clean out the kitchen drawers. Rearrange the shelves. Throw out things that no longer make sense. I will nod to myself as she will always be like this, fixing, sorting, improving, even when nobody asks.
I’d watch her with a smile. Because she’ll keep doing this as she grows, reorganising spaces, relationships, ideas, and entire phases of her life. I wouldn’t stop her. I’d tell her one thing:
Pause sometimes.
Enjoy the moment you’re in before upgrading it.
Live it. Revel in it.
She’d roll her eyes and ask the real questions.
“Will my heart break?”
“Yes,” I’d say. Easily. Calmly. No drama.
And I’d tell her this part slowly, because this one matters: every broken piece will end up holding more love than her heart ever did when it was intact. Not because pain is magical, but because breaking opens rooms inside you that comfort never unlocks.
She will ask if she’ll cry.
Oh, she will. Spectacularly. Quietly. Publicly. In bathrooms. In cars. In temples. In dressing rooms. In the middle of otherwise functional days.
Until one day she’ll realise something important.
That vanity, not ego, but self-regard, is her sanity. Vanity is her Sanity, and it is what she will decide.
Then she asks me about money.
I’ll tell her she’ll learn to make money her friend. Not her master. Not her moral test. A companion. She’ll earn it, lose some of it, give plenty of it away. Her generosity will continue to blossom, and giving will bring her more joy than receiving ever could, until she learns that balance is perfect.
She will want to know if she’ll meet the wrong people.
Of course you will, I’ll say, smiling mysteriously.
Only the wrong ones can teach you what is right about you.
The tea will be perfect.
And I won’t tell her that the taste of it will never change.
The kitchen will look different. Like it’s smiling.
That is just her touch.
A trail of love, care, and whimsy she will continue to leave behind wherever she goes, in rooms, in lives, in moments she doesn’t even realise she has altered.
She’ll think she was just making tea.
She never is.
