Make mistakes

I know I am still relatively young, but if there is something I would have liked to tell me younger self it would have been, "I wish you to make more mistakes, or at least have the courage to do so."

You see, we have worked too hard to be prepared, be perfect, to go through life unscathed; and in a way we have been successful, ta-da? But we have been too successful, and because of that we have failed as we remain relatively untried, naive, and easily brought low by circumstances.

I wish you have been more brazen, that you would have gone up to a girl, ask her out, fall madly in love, and be utterly crushed when it didn't work out. I wish you would dared to have taken that random road trip, got on a bus, got utterly lost and had to figure your way back. I wish you would have bought that ticket, flown to a place where you don't know the language, hop on to trains, and visit with people and places that you will never forget.

I wish you have made more mistakes because sometimes life is about blundering through, finding out you were wrong but growing stronger because of it. I wish you have made more mistakes when you have the chance because chances are they would have led to greater things.

I wish you would have made more mistakes when we were younger, because boy it is getting increasingly harder to bounce back as we grow older.

But don't you fret, you remain my inner child, and together we will refuse to be set in our ways, and together we will try not to shy away from future mistakes in hope they will lead us to be a better, polished, well-rounded, wisen person.