Labels.

A letter to my twenty-something year old self

Photo by Andrzej Gdula on Unsplash

Hello from future you,

It is February 2024 and you are now 38 years old.

Today, as I sat looking out of the window in my office, I thought of the labels that I hold now. The ways that I choose to refer to myself and the titles that society has given me because of how life has panned out thus far. It made me think of you, so I thought I’d pen this note.

There are some labels you thought you’d have, but actually, the main reason I’m writing you this letter is because of all of the labels that you have today that couldn’t and wouldn’t have even entered your mind in your twenties.

Self-employed. WFH. A Manifestor in Human Design. Introvert. HSP. Obliger (in rebellion). Post-perfectionist. Human. Writer. Renter. Childless. Unmarried. Worrier. Warrier. Broke. Brave. Slow reader. Dreamer. Friend. Curious.

Among the many others.

You thought these labels would define you, and some of them do. Namely, the ones you’ve chosen for yourself as you’ve walked your road. But your greatest work has come from finding meaning outside of them or giving them your own definition.

Soulmates are the women who you do each stage of this life with. You romance your friends. You live by breadth, not ladders. Career means… well not much to you at all. It’s the label you care the least about. You birth words.

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Life is long. You don’t know everything. Stop forcing it. Some things you can only know with time. No amount of force, coercion or control will make it the thing you want it to be. And trust me, firstly, you don’t want anything that comes to you by those means, and secondly, so much can and will change. Some of the labels that you were doggedly determined you’d have and “want” right now, will fall away. Some circumstantially. Others as you develop as a human and figure out what you actually want from life. Some will be gut-wrenching labels to part from, others will just kind of float away, never having been decided upon, just one day, coming to be the way things are.

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As I sign off this letter to me some fourteen years in the past, a nod to me fourteen years from now. I hope I get to meet you. Having done this a few times now, I know that today’s wisdom is not tomorrow’s wisdom. I may consider myself the doyenne of the decades I’ve lived so far, but I am in the teen years of my adult life and I know there is so much more to learn and know. So many more labels to adhere to the sash of my life, as well as unpin and pack away.

Here’s to not knowing and being so thankful that labels—like minds and life paths—can and do change.