“What kind of person do you want to be when you’re older, Sam?”
If only I could talk to my younger self now.
Tell him to take all those opportunities,
He missed because he was too scared
Too unsure of the unknown.
I want to tell him to run away from all those responsibilities
All those ropes binding him,
Run till you’re sure your heart can’t pump oxygen to your muscles any faster.
So determined to get a job,
Chasing after a mediocre life,
There’s more to life than earning money,
More to it than getting a job and settling down.
I want to tell him to dive,
Just for once go on an unexpected adventure,
Because that’s where the most precious memories are created.
Instead of staying at home,
In this warm, comfortable jacket,
That will eventually choke all the creativity out of you
Why don't you risk the sun, Sam?
I want to tell him to sometimes break curfew,
To damn the rules, go to a few parties.
I want to tell him to not be afraid to love,
To sometimes break down the walls he’s built around his heart
Or you’ll become a machine,
Slowly, become a drone, become another blur in the gray faces.
Doing the same thing over and over and over again
You’ll be stuck watching the reruns of somebody else’s life,
You’ll be stuck in the great mushy middle where all the droning, moaning masses
Live and eat and act and dress and think alike and see the same movies
So they can have the same conversations
And then dream the same dreams,
The edge is where you want to be, where you want live,
Where you want to spend all of your days.
It holds the answers to your questions and the questions to your answers.
Live on the edge is what I want to tell him.
Live on the edge where the game's not rigged,
The air is clear and brisk,
You’re lightheaded and queasy,
Because everything is initiation on that sharp unforgiving edge.
Quit whining about your boring pathetic life and do something.
Take a trip, take a dare, take a spin, take a chance.
But please pick yourself up,
And for everything you’re worth,
Run run run all the way to the edge.
Because when you’re older,
All those hours you spent locked up in your room, studying, won’t be of any use,
All those times you did something you wanted,
Just because you wanted to,
Those will give you peace when you’re about to leave this world.