Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
We live in two separate worlds, separated by time and space. I see you, and know all about you. You do not see me, and know little about me, though you often dream and imagine me.
Indeed, though you are still only growing up, you already have your views on life. Your plans are not yet clear and are somewhat shaky, and you do not care much that someone whose life path is nearing its natural end is waiting in the future, ready to give advice, warn and admonish. I understand. I was like that in your years – convinced that the whole world is opening its doors just for me. When I look at the pictures from my youth, I see myself in your image – we are one soul and one body, though many years apart, yet connected with invisible threads of time. I have your photos, and with all your desire and will you can only try to imagine what I look like.
You are careless, surrounded by parental care, companions and friends, which instills in you the feeling of safety, and belief that it will always be like that, unaware that the days of carelessness will once – perhaps even faster than you can imagine – will be replaced by days of temptation, shakes, simply some new, different order things that are also a part of life – a time when everything turns upside down, when you need a lot of determination and courage. You have enough strength to overcome difficulties, to oppose injustice. Sometimes I dream of you too. Invited, and often uninvited, you come to my thoughts, to my memories, though you are far away, in some other, unreachable time, and some space that does not belong to this present one. And yet, we are inseparable, we cannot exist without one another.
In the world where no secret can be understood fully, some experience remains at the end, as a present from nature at the end of our journey. It is a key that opens no locks, it is a treasure that becomes worthless if we keep it for ourselves. Like in the calm surface of water, only in others we can see clearly our own image; others – that is our life.
Be wary of the lies of the illusion and deception that arise in the lonely days, guard yourself from dangerous vanity and hate. Test yourself, but be wary! As your heart beats in my chest, so has mine always been beating in yours. As the sky is reflected in the sea, somewhere far away, the sea is reflected in some other sky. When we wound the one who loves us, we gravely hurt ourselves.
One day, all the fainted faces that have meant something to us will come out again, but it will be late to correct anything, because these faces will come from the empire of shadows. You will stand before them as in you were facing yourself. These are bitter days in a man’s life. Those ghosts are all that is left of us. We see ourselves in others’ eyes, we take love from others’ lips. What we are alone is small, miserable, poor and miniscule. How far it all seems now, as if it happened in some other life. What once was real, is now unreal, and what we could not even imagine, what came to us only in dreams, became the only true reality. Reason is not powerful enough to perceive this whole play of different influences that make our lives, nor are our feelings a reliable interpreter of the events. When we walk the path of calmness, when we do not plunge into the worst of temptations, in the moment of the awakened hope, is not the verdict then closer than ever? How many times have we seen the reflection of the sun in the water, and has not that sun run away through our fingers whenever we reached for it. In the same way we should not believe misery, nor luck, nor what we see, nor what we dream. Peace comes with the realization that endlessness is the same as a passing moment that goes away in a single breath.
Silence becomes the last frontier of suffering. After it comes nothingness. I remember it all – all the old sounds, reverberating, multiplied in the echo with the noise of the sea, and that terrible sound weaves and sinks into the soft cobweb of the sunset, woven from palm trees, sky and the sea.
I have nothing else to say to you. Trying to give you advice, I’m constantly saying myself; Does that make me a lousy teacher? Be wary, watch your every step in this deceptive world of shadows. The frantic desire followed by deaf peace – that is the price that a careless traveler pays in his search for meaning, in the endless wandering, between the realistic dream and the unbelievable reality.
Although we are one, we are different. Between us is a long life journey. But somewhere, in a moment that will turn into eternity, we will meet again, and be forever together.
About the project
Project Letter to Younger Self is implemented in collaboration between Nedeljnik and McCann Truth Central Belgrade, as part of the research “Truth About Years”.
We are used that surveys and research mainly deal with the ratings of political parties and leaders. The real life is somehow avoided by researchers, but when they do pay attention to it, the results often surprise us.
Truth About Years, the research conducted globally by McCann Truth Central, had interesting results in Serbia. In the country that is currently considered “the oldest in Europe” results show the perception of Serbs toward old age. So we learned that a large part of the population was indifferent, and that a considerable part of the respondents were concerned, and even fearful of old age.
That is why McCann Truth Central Belgrade and Nedeljnik decided to launch an action following the research about years, in which every second issue of the magazine will publish a letter from a public figure to their younger self, and a letter to their older self. All of the texts will eventually be compiled in a book that will be released in 2019. It will be a kind of collection of opinions, and an inventory of youth and promises of the old age.