The Common Denominator of All Your Problems
Dear 18-Year-Old Micah Taylor (of the future TheMicahTaylorSite.com),
Take a look in the mirror right now. I’m writing you with your long swoop haircut, skinny jeans and small, tight, black band t-shirt to tell you to go ahead and change your style now. In two years you’re going to make fun of all the kids who dress pretty much exactly like you’re dressed at this very moment.
You also need to know a few things about the way you flip your hair now that you think is so cool:
1) It’s not.
2) Not near as many (translation: no) girls are looking at/falling in love with you when you do it as you think.
3) In about three years a kid named Justin Bieber’s going to come along and make your hair flip his trade mark. You’re going to feel like an idiot.
Alright, enough about your style. I’ll tell you a couple things that may save you from real pain—not just that of your own pride.
Be a lot more cautious about who you date. When you actually discover which girl you’re going to marry, you’ll feel like you wasted a lot of time, effort, money, and emotion on all the others.
Spend more time with the sister you find it hardest to be around. Spend a little more time caring about her, and a lot less time caring about yourself… and the aforementioned females. If you don’t do this, you won’t be the only person blaming yourself for how she grows up.
Buy stock in Apple. And Google.
Delete your Facebook account now. They hate you.
Spend more time doing what you love. School’s not as important—or influential—as you and a lot of the people in your life think.
Never smoke cigars outside in the summer.
It really is aliens at the end of the new Indiana Jones movie. I know, right? Don’t waste your time/money.
You are a super arrogant jerk. You don’t know everything. Everyone you will ever meet—no matter their age, ethnicity, gender, or religious belief—has something to teach you.
Go see more movies with your Dad.
Quit expecting your mom to do your laundry. Start doing hers for a change.
Spend less time bashing and deconstructing things and people and look for solutions. Cynicism will not actually protect you from anything or anyone. Your time will be better spent as a cheerleader than a critic.
Dumbledore dies.
Listen closely to this. It’s very important that you grasp this concept. It’s very simple, but it may be one of the hardest ideas you will ever have to grasp: you are the common denominator of all your problems.
Above all, love your God and your neighbor with every fiber of your being.
Sincerely,
Micah Taylor
p.s. oh yeah, and never refer to yourself as something like “Micah Taylor of TheMicahTaylorSite.com.” That’s just cocky.
(Submitted by Micah, age 22)
