LETTER TO MYSELF WHEN I WAS 20 YEARS OLD
I'm not going to ask how you are, because I remember. You are fine, and in the years to come you will be fine too. I do not have much time (nor will you have it, then), nor much room. Just 2,500 characters to tell you something important from the future.
So I choose this:
Travel more!
If you are going to insist on something, insist on going away. Whenever you can, and each time for longer periods. Follow the same dreams, make the same plans, undertake the same projects and repeat the same mistakes if you want, but travel more. In the years to come, you will be distracted by ideas, feelings and people. Hold on to the plan, I know what I’m talking about.
Invest in traveling, which is investing in living.
Spend what you earn to get away from time to time, there can be no perspective without distance. Go and come back, and then leave again. Believe me, nothing will give you greater moments of happiness.
Travel young, circumstances will only complicate things later. Travel far and travel close. Travel with your dearest people, travel alone; travel single, only later travel as a couple. Nothing tests love like traveling together, said Mark Twain, a tireless and cunning traveler who found love, traveling.
Walk, walk, walk. Walk new streets. Get lost without fear. Talk to strangers, listen to all the stories, ask all the questions. Eat alone, eat naked, eat slowly, eat on the go. Eat over there what you will never eat here. The expensive and the cheap, the green and the red, the hard and the thick. Squeeze all out of every day and every night.
Get drunk at least once in each city. Try everything that doesn't kill you. Make a fool of yourself. Fall in love for a couple of days. Love in another language. Speak different languages. Reach for glory. Travel with humbleness, which is what guarantees the capacity for wonder.
Marvel at the epic and the simple, the extraordinary and the mundane. Be amazed by the smells, the colors, the nature and what people do with nature. Be amazed by the art, the chaos, the future and the past, the exquisite and the disgusting. Learn without pride and let yourself be overwhelmed over and over again by amazement, which is what hydrates the soul and the brain. You are going to see that the world is going to turn smaller. The obstacle then will be your will, or the lack of it.
I would have liked to understand it earlier, don’t let it happen to you. By the way, in the title above I say letter just because, in the future, nobody writes letters. Not even when they're traveling.
— Cristian Carbonero —