What I Would Say to My 21-Year-Old Self

Even if I was too stubborn to listen

Everyone has regrets, especially those who deny it. Everybody wishes they had handled a situation differently or done something they were too scared to at the time. Mostly, people regret not having done something.

I can imagine talking to my younger self with a preaching tone to my voice. It would be something like,

“You’re going to pull out of this one, just be hopeful!”

My old self would swat me away saying “even if I do, don’t invalidate my feelings and just let me feel this way!”

Here’s a list of 5 things I would tell my younger self if there was a choice to travel through time.

Do it! Skydive!

My sister managed to get a really good deal for me to go skydiving. The timing was perfect — I was young, I had just finished my third year of university and felt like celebrating, and I loved the idea of doing something more adventurous.

My sister wouldn’t do it with me. She claimed that if she was a little younger and with no child to look after, she might have done it for the thrill of it. But being in your 30’s and being a mother to a 4-year-old puts things in perspective. It wasn’t worth the risk for her.

I had no one to go with and I absolutely didn’t want to experience this alone. I felt it was something you do with your best friend. I couldn’t do it. In the end, we gave the ticket away. My opportunity to become an adrenaline junkie was long lost.

I didn't think much about it at the time because I thought I would get another chance to do it. Every year, I would look at my options for an extraordinary outing with Angie or my boyfriend at the time (now my husband), and we always chose something a little more worth it financially.

The same amount of money to buy us tickets to do skydiving could buy us flights to another country, or a few excursions while on holiday, or tickets to some great theatre shows in London.

Now, I am 31 and a mother to an almost 2-year-old. I would never dream of doing it now. The chances of something going wrong are minimal, but the stakes are still too high for me now.

I literally missed an opportunity of a lifetime, and if I could, I would go back to tell me to just get on with it, that my sister would be waiting for me when I landed to share my experience with.

Stop Complaining

My life is pretty damn good and always has been. I just didn’t take the time to appreciate it.

In recent years I have realised I have the tendency to victimise myself. Granted my feelings are valid and I have gone through some bad stuff in my life, but it’s no worse than most people’s. I mastered the art of complaining about my circumstances and my outrage at the world for petty stuff. I was in self-destruct mode.

What I would’ve liked to tell my younger self is to give myself the attention I deserved. I should’ve stopped listening to myself complaining and challenged myself to get off my high horse and do something to make me feel better. It sure would have been more productive and efficient, but I was in my head too much and I didn’t realise how damaging it was.

I have managed to pull myself together at my worst times. Today I am emotionally stable, I am happier than ever before. Goodness knows how happy I would be today had I consciously practiced some mindfulness and adopted the habits I incorporate in my daily life today.

Or maybe I needed to go through every single little event that led to my “awakening”. Who knows.

Don’t Quit Dancing

Music is life.

Music is love.

Music has caught me when I’ve tripped over sadness and fear many times throughout my life. It has saved me from depression more than once.

I loved to dance. I still love it today. I took up a dancing class at school, and I joined a couple of dancing societies while at university. I love all kinds of dancing but I particularly love Hip Hop and Street. I could moonwalk when I was 10. I can move my hips like Shakira. I’m not too bad.

When I had just moved to England when I was 11, we lived with my grandfather until my parents found a house.

I remember singing and dancing my heart out to a song by Estopa, my favourite Spanish group. I was properly choreographing a dance to one of my favourite songs, “Tu Calorro”, when I turned around and caught my grandfather at the doorway, beaming smile of pride (or amusement, who knows) as he had been watching me jumping up and down while singing my heart out. As I stopped, he started clapping and told me to carry on as he walked away.

You found me nodding my head to a song at the bus stop, doing a two-step in shops, humming away on the London underground. I was first to get on the dancefloor in clubs and last to leave it.

I pictured myself thousands of times performing in a show, competing against countries. I imagined joining a group of dancers and working our way up to the top. I dreamed of getting a standing ovation as I finished a dance to “Keep Rollin’” by Limp Bizkit. I wanted to be in music videos with Beyonce and Les Twins.

At university, I took part in two dance shows, one for Hip Hop, one for Jazz. I buzzed with pride as I performed, keeping to the time and no longer needing to do the 8-step count because I just felt it. I remember the audience clapping, whistling, and sharing this rush of joy because everyone in the room was present at the same moment.

I wish I had taken myself more seriously with dancing. I don’t know if I was good enough to make it professionally, but I do wish I had pursued it. Instead, I didn’t think I could cope with the rejection so I didn’t even try.

However, I still enjoy dancing every single day, and my son loves it too. Andriel is 21 months old and can tell me what songs he wants on. Today, he loves Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars and has even learned some of the moves. He is musically inclined. We will always encourage him to follow his dreams, including a musical career if he so chooses it, no matter how much the odds are against him.

I’m So Proud of You!

When I was 13 I used to get pushed around by a group of girls from a rival school.

One time, however, the same girl that pushed me into the road and nearly got me run over by a car, received a slap to the face and a push into some shrubs. I didn’t hit her hard, but hard enough to confuse her, since I had never retaliated before. I questioned her, asked her what on earth I had done to her. She didn’t reply. She punched me in the stomach and I ran away.

A couple of days later I saw her on her own when I was out with my friends after school. I wanted to talk to her, to face her, while she wasn’t with her possie. I genuinely wanted to confront her civilly and ask her to agree to leave me alone, but the presence of my friends scared her and she ran away.

A few moments passed and we moved on, but then a man came out of a nearby house and started threatening us. He claimed to be the girl’s uncle and started to pick on the boys of my group.

I tried to plead with him, to tell him I wanted to talk to her because she had been picking on me for months, but he just saw red.

He grabbed my best friend by the throat and pinned him against a wall.

I ran to another friend’s house and knocked wildly on the front door, hoping that an adult would answer and help. Luckily, our friend’s mother came running and stopped the man from hitting my 13-year-old friend. We called the police.

We all gave statements of events, we were all warned to stay away each other, and that was the end.

I still think about this girl today. Being misunderstood is one of my biggest annoyances, and she misunderstood why I approached her that day. I’m sorry she felt scared and the need to get her 40-something-year-old uncle involved, but I also have this glimmer of hope that maybe the whole thing taught her to stop picking on people. I wonder whether her character softened or toughened up.

That was the first time I ever confronted a bully, and I have not been shy in doing so since. I have been bullied by managers throughout my career and not once did I succumb to their pettiness. I pushed back.

The Life You Picture Will Come True After-All

My ability to day-dream has always been on point. However, I didn’t realise how powerful visualisation really was until a couple of years ago. I know now why a lot of my dreams weren’t coming to be, and it wasn’t because the dream life doesn't exist.

It’s because I visualised a lot of bad stuff happening too.

I seek out the good in everyone, and I have always hoped for better-than-good results. But I have always felt deflated and disappointed by events, almost offended. That’s because although I day-dreamed every day about what could be and what I wanted, fear and doubt were also a big part of my thoughts.

Now that I know how powerful it is, I focus on visualising only what I want in my life. And if I could, I would’ve told my younger self to keep hoping rather than dwelling on what could or might not happen.

Last Words

I have had a good life so far and I hopefully still have a good life to go. I want at least two more kids, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get an award for my writing someday.

I’ll also be damned if I don’t get my dream billiards table with my dream home.

The fact that I am able to hope for these things goes to show how privileged and blessed I am.

I don’t wish for safety so much because my safety has never been threatened.

I don’t wish for shelter because I have always had a home, a good home at that.

In fact, in hindsight, I feel I have done so much right. And if there is anything that I have learned, it is to not dwell on what could go wrong and focus my energy on shaping my future as I want it.

In the next 10 years, I hope my future self will look at me now with beaming pride for the drastic changes I have made in my life.

In the next 10 years, I hope, I will be less familiar with the feelings of shame and anxiety, and better acquainted with happiness and fulfilment.

Thank you to Sean Kernan for the inspiration of this article.

Sylvia Emokpae, thinker and philosopher, is passionate about self-love, motherhood, and pro-race. See more work like this.