I opened a photo album and I was horrified. I couldn't believe I had black, curly, long hair 10 years ago.
"This guy is not me," I said while my girlfriend laughed.
"You are better now, believe me." She said.
The feeling was weird. That guy of the picture was me, but at the same time, I was not him anymore. Hair began to disappear just at that time and, if I could go back, I would have chosen a different haircut. For sure.
I remember friendships at that time. Nowadays I only talk with one of them. Everyone moves on and it's fine that people grow apart. Like, David Heinemer Hansson said, it's healthy to do so.
After years, I realized that it's better to have good memories of old friends, rather than meet them and fuck up those memories.
Life and time are the best filters. Long time relationships of any kind (business, friendship and romantic) pass these two tests. Change your life, mess everything up, go to live to another country and see who remains there. Hint: not as many people as you priorly expected.
The thing is: I am constantly changing my preferences, my career path, defining what I want to do for the next years. Therefore, I am changing all the time.
Life is short. If you assume a life expectancy of ~80 years and you substract the time you are unable to do things (from 0 to 18 years and from 70 to 80 years), you have a competent life window of ~52 years. Sleep uses 1/3 of that time, so you are able to do things for only ~35 years. Not a lot of time, I would say.
The conclusion is that I want to avoid the mistake of my long and curly hair from years ago. I don't want to look back and feel regret of something I was doing in the past. I want to try to minimize regret before I die.
During the journey, I will take bad decisions because it's inevitable to do so; you always try to do the best with your knowledge at a certain moment. But maximizing the knowledge while writing and sharing my journey, is the best way to point mistakes and, perhaps, avoid them.
Hi, I'm Erik, an engineer from Barcelona. If you like the post or have any comments, say hi.