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It has been almost 9 years now since I was in your shoes. Away from home for the first time, excited, scared, and filled with questions. The world is a big place, and coming from a small town, there is much you do not know. I have been granted a gift, a portal to write back to you. Not to give you directions on what choices to make, but to offer assistance in learning how to make choices. 

 

Now I know a letter from the future must be a strange thing to open. What would I have done if I received it myself? The logical conclusion is to toss it out, burn it up, or laugh it off. Even if I could receive a letter from the future, I wouldn't want to. Why spoil all of the fun? 

 

I am not here to spoil the fun. You deserve to experience it firsthand. But, you will soon realize it is not the "fun" times you learn from, nor the "fun" people you grow from. Actual growth comes from getting kicked in the back, falling on your face, breaking your nose and being man enough to get up, look yourself in the mirror, and pop that sucker back into place.

 

If I could only give you one piece of advice, it would be: "Buy the ticket, take the ride".  A quote from Hunter S. Thompson, your soon-to-be role model. Life isn't about watching clips of the ride on YouTube or doing a trial run in virtual reality; Life is about showing up, taking risks and doing the fucking thing.  

 

Roller coaster rides can be terrifying. As you slowly inch up to the apex to start the ride, you question the mechanics. Who built this thing? What were they thinking? Your stomach drops as you are hurled to the ground hundreds of feet in the air.  You don't even have to enjoy the ride the whole time, but you should be damn sure you can say as you walk off into the amusement park of the afterlife that you were open to all the experiences that ride had to offer. 

 

Coach Jansen always said, "Control the Controllables". You don’t get a choice in when the ride’s ups and downs come, but you can buckle your seat belt, keep your eyes open, and put your hands up. In life, you are going to have a lot of shit thrown at you. Shit you wouldn't choose in a million years. If there were 10,000 pieces of shit that you could select from, life would throw your last choice at you, and laugh as it sticks on your face like a big mudpie.

 

There is something special about shit in your eyes, because when you finally decide to clean it out, you will see more clearly than ever before. Life does not throw anything at you that you can not clean off with the right soap and water. Life does not ask for thanks for opening your eyes. Life will instead kick you in the butt and tell you to get a move on. We must keep our eyes open while inching up the ride, and we may ask why the fuck did I get on, but we cannot shut out the experience. We must open up to it and remember that all things that rise must fall. 

 

Going down the ride is the fun part. The drop makes you feel like you're flying. We raise our hands and scream in exhilaration. Down is the feeling of falling in love or following a dream. Going down is more dangerous than going up, but we are so excited that we do not care. Excitement is why we raise our hands; we must let go and let life take us in these moments to places we would never take ourselves. When life's passion grips your soul, you must let go of the life you hold on to so tightly. Call it fate, call it “God's Plan”, call it what you will, but always follow its call. 

 

I know what you’re thinking: “Of course I’ll be open. Of course, I’ll chase what I want. Why wouldn't I?” But the truth is—I don’t know. I could say life gets hard or that plans fall apart, but we both know that shouldn't stop someone as stubborn as us. And yet... it has.

I hate to admit it, but if you saw me now, you might call me a failure. You might think I’m weak. I've had hard breaks. I've blamed others. But when I strip away the noise, I see a simple truth: I am the product of my choices. I can keep making excuses, or I can take a long, hard look in the mirror and fix the attitude of the motherfucker staring back.

And here’s the twist—I’m proud of who I’ve become. There’s a tenderness in me now that only suffering could’ve taught. I finish what I start. I value love and friendship in a way you don’t yet understand. I’ve chased dreams even when people laughed. I’ve grown into someone more honest, more open, more human than I expected.

So keep your eyes open. Keep your hands up. And when it’s time—let go. Let go of fear, of perfection, of needing permission.

That’s when the ride really begins.

Before the ride begins, make sure you’re strapped in. The fear you feel going up the hill is nothing compared to the terror of flying out of your seat mid-fall. I told you I wouldn’t spoil the future, and I won’t—but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to pass on a little wisdom.

This wisdom is meant for you, but I know you better than anyone. You're too stubborn to take it all in now. One day, you’ll sit at this same desk, writing this same letter to the version of you that still doesn't get it. Maybe that’s the cycle. But maybe—just maybe—you’ll misplace this letter, and someone else who needs it will find it. Hell, maybe I’m finally softened up enough to take my own advice, spooning the medicine out for you and swallowing it myself.

If there are two things I’ve always known about you, it’s that you hate routine—and even more than that, you hate being told what to do. You’ve always chased freedom and fought against structure. But remember what Socrates said: “Those who are unable to govern themselves will inevitably be governed by others.”

You think keeping your schedule wide open invites creativity, and sometimes it does—but you also know yourself. When there’s no structure, you drift. With your addictive personality, it’s easier to pick low-hanging fruit than to climb the tree. Why write a blog when you can just watch a video on writing one? Why work on your character when you can upgrade a loadout in Call of Duty? Why change the world when it’s easier to make fun of it?

But let me tell you—the fruit at the top? It’s 100 times sweeter. And it’s worth the climb.

Have you ever had a day when you only had one thing you needed to do?

Let’s say it’s working out. You wake up on a Sunday and decide it’s going to be a day of rest. But to earn that rest, you tell yourself you’ll get a quick workout in first—burn off the guilt from a weekend of overindulgence.

You think about getting up and starting your day strong. But instead, you stay in bed a little longer, scrolling your phone. It’s a rest day, after all.

Eventually, you get up and make a big breakfast. Now you're full, heavy, and sluggish—so you decide it’s not the right time to move. You turn on the TV and find something to watch. Before long, the group chat lights up:

"Where we dropping, boys?"

You tell yourself you’ll work out later. But the afternoon disappears.

Like Frogger, you hop from distraction to distraction—dodging your responsibility like a truck barreling toward you. Time keeps slipping, but you don’t even notice.

By the time dinner is over and the gym is closed, you look back on the day and rationalize that it just got away from you.

But the truth is, you didn’t control your day—your day controlled you.

Our issue in this scenario is not a missed workout - you can make that up without a problem. The issue is a missed opportunity for us to put a tally in the win column. Greg Plitt said, "If you don't have a plan in life, someone else will make you part of their plan." Each day that slips away without us taking control inches us one day closer to losing control of our lives. 

One way to ensure you are filling your day with structure is to create challenges for yourself. Friends often tell me that they will start pursuing their dreams, but first, they must put a couple of things in order in their lives. They want to run a marathon but decide to lose weight first. They want to return to graduate school but need to cut back on partying.  They think the tail is wagging the dog. Don't think you need to lose weight to start running; start running, and the weight will begin to fall off. Apply to grad school; the late-night study sessions and early-morning classes will ensure you stay off the booze. Committing to the challenge forces you to clear a path to success. But if you wait to clear a path before committing, you’ll only commit yourself to failure.

 

Self-growth and self-mastery result from doing hard things and living an examined life. Only by pushing the boundaries of our comfort zone can we find what we are truly capable of in this life, but this does not mean we should run our heads into a brick wall until we are knocked out. The strong man lifts a rock to see if he can, but the wise man lifts it to see what lies underneath.  Socrates states, "To live an unexamined life is to live a life not worth living." We must be aware of our actions and results. We must be scientists in a lab, creating hypotheses, doing experiments, and analyzing the results. We must separate ourselves from our biases, learn to isolate a variable, and move forward based on our findings. 

 

A study was conducted in which participants were placed in front of a control panel and instructed to cause a light to flash. The participants went nuts on the control panel, treating it as a Bop-It—twisting, pulling, and bopping buttons in hectic sequences. When the light flashed on, they would analyze what they had just done and attempt to recreate the results, but they could never achieve the same outcome. Why, you may ask? Well, what the participants were unaware of was that the light flashed at random intervals, regardless of what buttons they pushed, knobs they pulled, or dials they twisted.

They were like little brothers handed an unplugged controller—so we could get back to our game in peace. They thought their frantic button-mashing made the light flash. It didn’t. But they believed it did—just like people who live unexamined lives.

Rather than isolating the actual causes of events, they assign meaning to whatever happens to be nearby. They believe it was the confidence from alcohol that got them a second date, rather than the genuine connection they shared. Or that the full moon caused their breakup, instead of the months of communication issues they avoided. If you refuse to live in an examined way, you may as well stop washing your hands—because without careful experiments, it makes more sense to blame sickness on ghosts than on germs.

Now, the hope is that if we can do enough challenging things, examine ourselves thoroughly enough to produce self-growth, and channel that self-growth into self-mastery, in time, everything will fall into place. Which would be dandy and sweet, but as I am sure you could guess, this is not the case. Why not? 

 

The Hopi Tribe states that we are living in the fourth incarnation of the Earth. The first three were too perfect and too easy for the people living in them, and many broke their god's golden rule. They stopped singing the song of creation and began working only for themselves—selfish, disconnected, and destructive. Like in the story of Noah's Ark, their God provided refuge for the few deemed worthy and destroyed the rest.

After three failed attempts, he realized he could not create a perfect world for imperfect people. Perfection made them lazy. They forgot how to sing. So instead, he created a Koyaanisqatsi—a world out of balance. In this world, balance wouldn’t be given—it would have to be earned. Humans were tasked with keeping it together, knowing that harmony built through struggle would be more meaningful than harmony handed to them.

The Hopi now believe the world is out of balance again. But this time, it won’t be the gods who decide if we survive or are wiped out. It’ll be us.

The world is not perfect, nor should it be - it is precisely what it needs to be. The duality of the world creates the universe's unison. It does not divide it. What would we know of good without bad? What would we know of man without woman? What would we know of heat without cold? The spectrums we slide on are not split in two as we think, but are merely a single mountain where up and down are just a case of where you decide to start. It is not our job to break down what is good and evil. It is our responsibility to bring harmony to our surroundings; however, we must first cultivate harmony within ourselves. 

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