When you’re eighteen, you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof. The world is wide open. Anything feels possible. You’re convinced that time is infinite and failure is something that happens to other people.

I recently tried a simple exercise. I imagined myself ten years from now, sitting quietly, looking back at the version of me that exists today. Not judging. Just observing. What would that future version thank me for? What would he wish I’d done differently? What would matter — and what would feel strangely irrelevant? It was confronting how little of it had anything to do with achievements.