Prise; compromise

Listening to: Learning - Perfume Garden

There are some who think that learning needs to come with instructions - a manual, so to speak. To stay by the rules, to not go beyond the limits of what others tell you is accepted, beyond the limits of what you yourself think is right.

But what happens then, when you face situations in which you have the answers for, when you know what is expected of you, but the right thing to do was to chuck everything out and do what you felt was right?

"Well you shouldn't have done it in the first place" - how easy easy easy it is for you to judge and to tell me what I should and should not do.

But where do I stop then? Do I hold myself back when something begins to look wrong, or do I go a little way ahead, just to satisfy my curiosity - to know what could be ahead?

Would you rather regret not doing anything, or do it anyway, and regret that you did it?

I would choose the latter, although when it comes to regretting it, it seems almost pointless when you've already done it. You can't change things that have already happened, as much as you want to - even if you've been hurt, and confused, and wished you had done something more to change things.

The important thing is that you do not know.

I like how people tell me that graduating at 20 - "so young!" - would give me time to "chill" (whatever that means), and to find out what to do with myself.

I'm 20. That's it. It's a number. Nobody's going to tell me, "Okay, so you're not 21 yet, that's okay, you're allowed to make mistakes, that's all right, you're not expected to be that mature yet".

No. No. It doesn't work that way. Young or not, inexperienced or not, naive or mature - I have reached this stage. There are things expected of me. This is how I have to respond, to react, to think, to plan, to behave, to speak, to act.

There may be guidelines to follow, advice to take, but how far can they take me? Can I trust that your advice would be the best for me? You're angry when I say that you haven't been through this, that you have no idea what it's like - I am rebellious sometimes, yes I admit that - but look at it from my perspective: How do I choose between what's best for me, what's best for you, what's best for the rest of the people who matter in my life?

I tell myself, as rationally as I can, that other people's problems are not my burden to hold. I can only help by listening, by giving advice, but that their problems - for whatever reasons that may or may not involve me - are not my burden. I cannot carry too many things when my metaphorical hands do not know where to grasp or to hold on to. But it's there - and as much as I can say that I want you to be happy, to understand what you're doing - tell me how much of the truth am I telling. Or not.

And you tell me that choosing this would be better over that - but do you know, yourself, what's best for you? Can you tell me what you're doing?

Ha, remembered something that Granny Weatherwax said to Tiffany, about life or magic, about how when it comes to life, you get the test first, then you have to go back and find out what you did wrong. You learn from the test, unlike in school, where you go to the test prepared with material you've been studying for months and months.

The problem with life, though, is that mistakes can't be offset by extra credit or extra nice professors. Nobody's going to take out a red pen and say, "Oh I see your point, I can give you another three points for this question here, and it looks like you got an A." And there won't be other midterms or finals to help you boost your grade. This is the final result, kid. Here's your mistake staring you in the face like your failed assignment and your imminent C.

Let go, you say. Let go of whatever you did wrong in the past. Put right what can be put right. Do better, for something that was going wrong before. Let go.

Ask me this in February, and I don't know if I'll give the same answer.