2.7.2007: The Story Can't Be Changed (But We Try, How We Try)

The Guy is here with another guy – around eighteen, sort of looks like The Guy, but smaller, a little cockier, less grey hair – we’ll call this young guy The Guy Back When.

The Guy Back When looks discouraged.

THE GUY
Listen.

Right now. This thing you feel right now.
It passes.
It isn’t forever.

Listen to them. Let them talk you out of it.
Stay here. Go to school here.
Do what they pressure you to do,

and it’s going to feel like such a compromise
but trust me…
because the things you do instead…

I know right now you just want to get out,
venture out into the world and take it over,
but you’re not ready. Not yet.

Trust me.

You’re going to think you’ve lost it.
That ambition.
And for a long time it’s going to sit quietly inside you,
waiting it’s turn,
and it’s going to feel like it’s gone.

But it’s not. It’s waiting.

And when it resurfaces –
your life just opens up,
it flowers,
it comes at just the right time
when you’re exactly the person you need to be,
exactly the person you want to be…

It’s not going to matter that you miss an opportunity right now.
Because others are coming.

Life is never a closed door.

The Guy tries to think of other things to say. But what’s the point, right? Because you don’t really get to tell your younger self that the mistakes you think you made were really the best things you could have done. You don’t get to comfort the person you were with the person you become.

You only get to look back and wish that your life could be more like this play.

Ah well.

The Guy Back When will learn all this soon enough, right?

And when he does, he’ll sit at his computer and write a play on February 7, 2007 that begins with him talking to himself and ends with the lights going down.