Someday you’ll give a speech

And the world will listen.

Not just tech conference associates stuck in a row

But lost people seeking guidance in the same way we once sought it.



Someday you’ll stand up and talk

Not about minutiae, but overall experiences.

You’ll discuss your choices and how no choices are wrong

But some give more opportunity to learn than others.

And the world will applaud your optimism

And speak of such a wise soul, not remembering that you haven’t always been older

And that you didn’t have all the answers, and that you made mistakes purely and fervently

And you had to learn these lessons the hard way to talk of them so casually.



But the world will forget these things and hear only the smooth ivory words of polished experience.

Their rough wooden phrases of inexperience will scrape at their lives until it’s raw

Like yours used to

So you spoke over those words so many times in your head that they stopped hurting

(Any more than a rough bludgeon can sting than a smooth one)

And you had enough distance to see how you grew, and you’d never do anything differently.



Act now as you would act then. Make decisions that wise men make, and count it as a credit to your later self, taking an early withdrawal of knowledge from the stores you will gather.



If it hurts now, it makes a good story.

If it works now, it’ll make people listen when you talk about the other ones.

But the best weapon you have in life is yourself.



Your sharp, arrow-head of intellect.

Your fast, silvery tongue crowned with words of weight.

Your arms that lift with the gust of ambition.

And these are yours forever, so long as you’ll let them be.



The story is waiting, whatever one it is. Your speech is being written every day.

The world is holding its breath.

You’ll be ready by then. But start being ready now.

***

I wrote this to my friend Zach, and he reminded me it existed a year later.

I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing it.

-Nika