My Message in a Bottle

I found an absolute jewel in the journal section at Chapters the other day.

It's a Writer's Journal that gives you ideas for things to write about!  I cannot tell you how many times I have been stuck for ideas.  Now I have over five hundred!  My goal, (once it's officially written down, there's no going back), it to do every, single one of them.  If nothing else I'll get some practice writing and my blog will be full.  Hopefully I can have some good fun along the way.

The opening writing prompt was this:

                "While at the beach you decide to write a message in a bottle.  What would it say?                         Who would you like to find it?"

Wow.  Talk about diving right in.  This is really thought provoking.  What kind of message would you want to send?  Something inspirational?  Something funny?  A warning?  Who would you want to read it?  A stranger?  A child or an adult?  A family member?  

In my head I would love my message to be some Oprah-esq nugget of inspirational wisdom, but in reality, I'm not that elegant.  I can be funny, but, I can be funny anywhere.  This is a message in a bottle!  Whatever I write is going to travel in a delicate glass vessel, through stormy seas and calm bays and get thrown around in a violent surf until it washed up on some far away shore.  To just attempt that journey it must contain something of significance, not some cheesy one liner.

Who would I want to find my message?  I could direct it to another 40 something woman, but really, I think by this age most of us have the big things sorted out at least a little.  There are or aren't children.  There are or aren't spouses, careers and goals.  I don't need to send another 40 year old woman advice,  I need to meet up with her and down a  bottle of wine!  Kudos lady, we made it this far!

I could send my message to a man.  Lordy Jesus could I give a man some advice!  But, as we all know, men never listen anyway, so why waste the paper.  Maybe if I chose a young man, a teenager.  I'm sure parents of teenage boys are laughing hysterically at the idea of teenage boy absorbing anything a middle aged woman has to say, but maybe a 12 or 13 year old.  Someone young enough that they have friends who influence them, but they aren't quite old enough to think their parents are total losers yet.  Do they exist?

Then, like all writers should, I turned my thoughts inward, to my own past.  What did I need to hear as a youngster that helped me to become the person I am today?  At what age did I most need to hear it?  When was I the most vulnerable?

Twelve to thirteen year old girls are under a kind of stress and pressure that would drive the highest powered executive straight to the shrinks couch.  At twelve and thirteen, girls are physically morphing into women, while mentally still girls.  Forget the pressure to do well in school and to achieve in extra curricular activities.  That's nothing!  Throw in the pressure to be beautiful, aka thin, popular with other girls and attractive to boys.  The pressure to wear the right clothes and have the right phone.  Don't forget peer pressure from friends to drink, use drugs and have sex. Toss in a sprinkling of a parents crumbling marriage or financial distress, PLUS, and never forget this one, you get your period.  Yep, I would say if anyone could use a tidbit of wisdom it is a 12 year old girl.

So hear is what I would write in my message in a bottle, that I hope would be found on some distant beach by some stressed out twelve year old girl:

                 "Your history does not define your future, and the measure of your success will                             always be in people, not possessions."

Some of us have shitty childhoods, or get into trouble as teenagers, or make a series of bad choices, but the adults who look at themselves and say, "I am this way because of my childhood", or, "I am this way because of what happened to me", are doomed to be miserable failures.  The past is the past.  We don't live there anymore.  It cannot be changed.  If the only thing you learn from a crappy childhood is that you don't want to repeat it, awesome.  Use that as a motivation to be better, not as an excuse for why you're not.

When will you know if you have succeeded in being better?  Look at who is around you, not what is around you.  You can be poor and joyous or rich and miserable or any combination in between.  Would you rather have a modest income and drive a Honda, but have a huge circle of friends and lots of interests and hobbies, and the time to enjoy them, or, drive your Cadillac Escalade to your McMansion in the suburbs and spend every other waking minute earning the money to pay for them? 

    

These were vital realizations for me at a time when I needed them the most.  I would hope to be able to plant these seeds into the brain of some unsuspecting teenage girl who thought she was just going for a walk down the beach.

So there you go.  Exercise number one complete.  Feel free to leave a comment with the type of message you might choose to send, and who you would like to find it!

Peace out!