Ask your parents what they wanted to be at your age. You’ll learn about them and about how plans change.
STILLNESS
WHAT THIS MEANS
Parents arrive in your life already finished, so it is easy to forget they were once exactly your age with a completely different plan. Asking about that plan tells you two things at once: who they were before they were your parent, and how little the final version of a life resembles the first draft of it. Both are useful to know while you are drafting.
Ask the question this week, at dinner or in the car where nobody has to make eye contact. Then ask what happened to it. Most people have never been asked and are glad to be.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
What did your parents hope for at the age you are?
MORE IN TIME, MORTALITY & LEGACY
- Some people start a small scholarship in a grandparent’s name. Legacy can be as simple as helping one kid a year.
- Old letters prove people were exactly as confused as you are now. They figured it out. You will too, mostly.
- One smell from a stove can drop you back into a kitchen you haven’t stood in for ten years. Cook the old recipes.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.