What advice would you give to your teenage self?
If I could give my teenage self one piece of advice, it would be this: read. Not just when it’s required, not just when it’s easy or entertaining, but with hunger, with purpose, with the understanding that every word has the power to shape the way you see the world.
I wish I had known sooner what reading could do to a person. How it could peel away layers of ignorance, slow and methodical, like water eroding stone. I grew up in a bubble, distracted by the glimmer of things that meant nothing, video games, momentary thrills, and the comfortable haze of apathy. I never thought to look beyond what was in front of me, never questioned the world that allowed me to stay ignorant for so long.
But reading did something to me. It dismantled the foundation of the life I thought I understood and forced me to rebuild, brick by brick, with knowledge as my only tool. The world I was born into was privileged, a sheltered existence where struggle was something distant, something I was told existed but never truly saw. The world I live in now, the one I opened my eyes to, is desolate of hope for so many. Reading made me see that. It made me feel it. And once you’ve seen the truth, you can never go back to ignorance.
It changed my dreams. My ambitions. It turned me from someone content with “good enough” into someone who wants to understand every little detail, the technical aspects of language, of history, of philosophy, of systems designed to keep people in chains while others thrive. It made me realize that education isn’t just important, it’s everything! A passion for learning is what separates those who question from those who obey, those who change the world from those who are swallowed by it.
To my younger self, I would say this: Put down the controller. Pick up a book. Let it break you. Let it rebuild you. Let it make you angry. Let it make you think. Because the more you read, the less you’ll settle for the world as it is, and the more you’ll want to change it.
ImpChimp Art 