Voice over:
Good Morning John, Almost ten years ago,
I got on stage wearing a lanyard in the worst way possible
and told a room of people something that I still think is true…
You have no obligation to your former self.
Diegetic audio:
“There is one person I can say objectively that I am smarter than.
And it was me four years ago. He knew like all the things
that I currently know except less. And he the life experiences that I have
except fewer. So why do I have an obligation
to a guy who is dumber than me, but literally does not exist.”
Voice over:
If the wisdom of the last ten years and knowing full well that I am,
as that guy ten years ago said, smarter than him,
I could add some nuance to that statement.
Yes, my former self is dumber than me. No, they don’t exist.
But I am also just a story that I tell myself about myself.
That’s what I am. And so there’s something tricky
about having /no/ obligation to my former self.
It is easy…I think, too easy these days,
sometimes to lose connections… to our past, to our friends,
to our communities, to our families, to our places
and our nations and our religions, and our histories.
Because, ultimately, it is you know true
that those things are arbitrary.
We just happened into them. And, maybe good maybe bad,
there are easier things in life to do than to feel connected to those things.
Like is the easiest thing, right? Smart phone games are very easy.
Doing what you have to do to get your work done
it’s is easy to prioritize that cause you’ve gotta pay the bills.
The kinds of investments we make in connection I think are harder,
if in part because, they are not necessary… we are not obliged to maintain them.
Now some of them we are, we feel that obligation
and sometimes we don’t. This is very different for different people.
But I think the amount of obligation that we feel to our former selves,
to our communities, to our families, I think it’s safe to say that,
even if it is high for you, it is, on average,
lower for society as a whole than it was fifty years ago.
John, when I was in high school, I was a bit of a punk,
or I liked to think of myself that way.
I listened to a lot of Dead Milkmen and Rancid and Operation Ivy
and The Clash and I did not
wanna have a normal, standard life.
Because, you know of course I didn’t. I was a high school student.
I definitely didn’t wanna to be a businessman, I didn’t want to be a lawyer.
And I remember having the thought many times that,
when I was 40 years old, I wanted to get a mohawk,
because that would prove that I had a job where
you could get a mohawk, which would mean that I would have succeeded
in 17 year old Hank’s version of what a cool life was.
And, honestly, that’s dumb. It’s silly.
Until quite recently I had a job where getting a mohawk would make my job,
and the jobs of my peers harder. It’s just like.
Not like substantially, but enough. But, that doesn’t mean
that I didn’t think about it. I totally did.
I thought about what I owe that former version of myself and
my thought was, “you know, nothing.
He’s dumber than me and he doesn't exist.”
But look, I’m a story that I tell to myself, and 17 year old me is a vital part of that story.
I am not him, but I love him. I care about him.
I care about and love a lot of people who don’t exist anymore.
Whether they’ve died or they just changed. Like I care about and love
20 year old Katherine.
And she’s not that same person anymore.
But I still love 20 year old Katherine and I also love 43 year old Katherine.
17 year old me was so certain and passionate
and scared and wild and very kind.
He was a good guy. He was kind of wonderful.
And he became me. And I feel like I was given an opportunity,
this week to honor him. So here I am, John.
I do no thave no obligation to my former self, I have the amount of obligation
to my former self that I want to have. And I want to have some.
John, I’ll see you on Tuesday