A Letter to Myself

Compliments of my friend Kate and her blog WorldWideKate, this is a letter written by a guy named Calvin Reid who is currently living in Thailand:

When you get old, remember how when you were 20, one of the best decisions you ever made was to live in paradise. You lived in Disneyland. You stopped wearing shoes. You stopped brushing the flies off your feet. You smoked weed on a mountain and under palm trees overlooking a beautiful beach. The soundtrack of your life was decided on by the bars that you visited. You met everyone. You never turned down an invitation. If you didn’t know something, you found out. You wrote daily phrases on your arm. Your plans were written in the sand so they could be washed away every morning. You knew the phase of the moon every day. You used to go to bed when the sun came up and wake up at 2 in the afternoon. You knew all the restaurants, bartenders and locals. You were a role. A local. It was your job to show everyone what paradise looks like. You made decisions with a coin. Your biggest problem in day to day life was sand. You never regretted anything. You trained puppies on the beach. You were always wondering what the next adventure would be. There was always a new story. Everywhere you needed to go was a walk down the beach. You would take 7-11 picnics of cup noddles and ice cream to people watch. You would order something on a menu if you didn’t know what it was. You were living the definition of bliss. Every second of everyday you were doing exactly what you wanted to. There were no rules. No limits. No regrets. No one to answer to except yourself. Regardless of time, you greeted everyone with “Good Morning”. You laughed about everything. Your backyard was a beach rave that only ended when the sun came up, and sometimes, not even then. You had an incomprehensible amount of freedom. And you could do anything you wanted to. If you wanted to lie in the sand and listen to reggae, no one could stop you. If you wanted to just listen to frogs in the jungle, there’s a place for it. If you wanted to photograph the sunset from a swing hanging from a palm tree, you did it. There were no street signs or addresses. Just places with names like ‘Fairyland’ (who plays the most chill music on the beach) or Cactus or Drop In (the main beach bars) or Chicken Corner (the Israeli place open 24 hours, right in the centre of it all.) You had ‘Fake-date Fridays’ and ‘Stupid Sundays’. You never stopped smiling and plans were never made beyond tomorrow. You met the most amazing people in the most unusual circumstances. Your palm trees had electrical sockets in them and the ones on the beach were lamp posts. You had no one to ask permission from or commitments to keep. Goodbyes with new friends were cause for a crazy last night, and a solemn last day, but you always had the memories. Banana shakes were a staple in your daily diet and there was fluorescent neon paint of every article of clothing you owned. You met a lot of people older than you and every single one said one of two things: “I wish I’d done something like that when I was your age.” or “I did something like that when I was your age and it was the best decision I ever made.” Not once have you heard of anyone who did something like this, and regretted it. Everyday you said “We are the luckiest kids in the world.” And you were. It was difficult for you to understand how people could go through their entire lives and not experience some of the things you were experienceing on a daily basis. You didn’t have memories. You were memories. You were hitting levels that you didn’t even know could exist and no one could bring you down, ever. You were untouchable in your youth. Never, ever, ever forget that.