abraham linkage

For the rest of your life, you are going to have a choice about how to read graffiti in a language you do not know, and you will have a choice about how to read the actions and intonations of the people you meet. I would encourage you as often as possible to consider […] the possibility that the lives and experiences of others are as complex and unpredictable as your own, that other people—be they family or strangers, near or far—are not simply one thing or the other—not simply good or evil or wise or ignorant—but that they like you contain multitudes, to borrow a phrase from the great Walt Whitman.

This is difficult to do […] You will always be stuck inside of your body, with your consciousness, seeing through the world through your own eyes, but the gift and challenge of your education is to see others as they see themselves, to grapple with this mean and crazy and beautiful world in all its baffling complexity.

I’ve learned not to regret the things that I have since cast aside, friends and objects, too. You learn from each of these things, be they mistakes or praise. You learn what you find valuable and what others find value in – those are not always the same thing, and one should not be beholden by the other. Above all, I’ve learned not to regret: these things have happened, and they are now simply parts of the amber of a previous moment. I can choose to harbor them if I find them valuable parts of my life or I can choose to simply leave them on the stoop, to be taken away by unseen hands. Perhaps what I discard, someone can learn from. Perhaps what I’ve been learning from all along is knowledge that has been used and discarded. Regret is merely promise unfulfilled, but perhaps it is selfish to assume that what we leave in our wake is ours forevermore. To harbor regret gives it power over us; will keep us forever beating against the waves towards a green light of a misremembered past. Our regrets should be cast aside, one hopes, to (at the very least) make way for new ones.

These are the days that must happen to you.