What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?

If there’s one thing I wish I could sit my younger self down and explain, over a decent brew, it would be this:

You don’t have to carry everything.

Not every injustice needs to be revisited. Not every wrong needs to be replayed in your head a thousand times. And not every person who hurt you deserves to occupy so much space in your life long after they’ve gone.

I spent far too much time holding onto anger.

Replaying conversations.

Thinking about what I should have said.

Wondering why people did what they did.

And, of course, imagining all the wonderfully satisfying things I could say if I ever got the chance to have that conversation again.

Funny thing is, most of those conversations never happened.

But I still carried the anger.

And who was it hurting?

Me.

The people and situations I was angry about weren’t necessarily giving me a second thought. Yet there I was, dragging the past around like an overpacked suitcase I couldn’t bring myself to put down.

It took me a while to understand something rather important.

Letting go doesn’t mean what happened was acceptable.

It doesn’t mean forgiving everyone, forgetting the lessons, or pretending an injustice never happened.

It simply means refusing to let yesterday dictate how you live today.

There’s a little wisdom in Buddhism that I wish I’d understood much earlier. We suffer when we cling too tightly to things, including our anger, our expectations and our need for life to have been different.

The past has happened.

We can learn from it. We can grieve it. We can even be bloody furious about it for a while.

But we cannot change it.

At some point, we have to decide whether we want to keep carrying it.

These days, I try to look at anger a little differently. I acknowledge it, ask myself what it’s trying to tell me, and then try to let it go.

Some days, I manage that better than others. I’m human, after all.

But I’m learning that peace isn’t about winning every argument or getting the apology you deserved.

Sometimes peace is simply deciding that your happiness is worth more than your resentment.

So, to my younger self, if I could pass on just one piece of advice, it would be this:

Feel what you need to feel. Learn what you can. Stand up for yourself when you need to.

But when the time comes, put the bloody suitcase down.

You’ve got places to go, people to love, and a life to live.

Don’t waste it carrying yesterday into tomorrow.

Stay safe,

Bc