Would Your Past Self Be Proud of the Life You Live Now?

What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?

The Pride My Younger Self Would Not Recognise at First

If the young man I once was walked into my study this morning, I doubt he would be impressed. At least, not at first.

He would find no office, no file awaiting my signature, no title on the door. He would see a man in his seventies at his desk before sunrise, writing for readers he has never met, working patiently through a beginner’s lesson in Python, and planning nothing more urgent than a walk. That young man measured life in syllabus schedules, deadlines, and career ladders, where success came printed on a letterhead. By his measure, he might conclude that I had quietly slowed into decline.

So here is my answer to today’s question, turned the other way round: the things my past self would be proudest of are the very things he would first mistake for failure.

1.Writing without applause

He would ask the practical questions first. Who commissioned it? Is it paid? How many people read it? When Rise&Inspire began in March 2023, nobody had commissioned it and nobody was waiting for it. It has since become a daily discipline of well over a thousand consecutive mornings, and it now reaches more than sixteen hundred readers across the world. But the number is not what would win his respect. What would win it is that the writing continued on the mornings when no one responded. The young admire talent. Only later do we learn to admire persistence that needs no witness.

2.Becoming a beginner again

In his world, seniority meant you had finished being a student. He would be puzzled to watch a man of my years asking basic questions about terminal commands and testing ideas alongside an artificial intelligence. It would look like a step down. It is the opposite. After a long career, the hardest thing to keep alive is not knowledge but the willingness to be ignorant in public.

3.Choosing an unhurried life

My mornings now begin with warm water, a handful of almonds and walnuts, and a brisk walk measured by breath rather than by the clock. To a young man forever running late for something, this would look like idleness. He would not yet know that slowness is a discipline, harder to practise than haste, and that peace of mind is the one promotion nobody else can grant.

None of this reversal is my discovery. Confucius traced his own life in stages: at fifteen he set his heart on learning, and only at seventy could he follow his heart’s desires without overstepping what was right. The young choose the direction; only the years reveal whether they kept faith with it. The ancient Indian scheme of life’s stages gave a name, vanaprastha, the forest-dweller, to the season when a person steps back from worldly duties to reflect and to teach. Stepping back was not defeat. It was the next assignment. And the Tamil classic Naladiyar¹ reminds us that learning has no shore while the learner’s days are few, so one must learn with discernment, like the swan of legend that drinks the milk and leaves the water.

A fair objection

Is this simply an old man dressing up a smaller life as wisdom? I have put that question to myself, and it deserves an honest answer. Slowing down becomes wisdom only when it is chosen and when the learning continues. Retreat that stops growing is decline; retreat that keeps learning and giving is a new stage of the same journey.

Nor would my younger self approve of everything. There are words I would take back, opportunities I let pass, and situations I understood only in hindsight. Pride in the past does not require a perfect record, only that the mistakes taught something. And one thing he would recognise at once: the slower pace never softened the principles. When the moment called for standing firm on fairness, or for stepping away from a position with dignity once the work was done, the resolve was still there.

Now turn the question towards your own life. Ask yourself:

What in your life today might your younger self mistake for failure, though you know it to be growth?

What habit have you kept that the person you were twenty years ago doubted you could sustain?

Where have you stayed true to your values when a shortcut would have been easier?

You do not need a trophy to earn the respect of the person you used to be. Give that younger self time to look closely. What first looks like slowing down may turn out to be arriving.

Keep learning, keep showing up, and keep striving to elevate in life.

Note

¹ Naladiyar (Nālaṭiyār, literally “the four-line verses”) is a classical Tamil collection of four hundred quatrains on ethics, composed by Jain monks and counted among the Eighteen Lesser Texts (Patinenkilkanakku) of Tamil literature. The thought paraphrased here is from verse 135, in the chapter on learning.

John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 17 October 2026: What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?
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