With hindsight: Dear Bernie…

Happy twentieth birthday — and you and Julie are just about to get married! Some people reckon you are too young, but I know  that you know what you are doing. Having a special person to share your life journey with is a real blessing, and your journey will be a very rich one. In some respects, at the moment you think you know it all, but in other ways you know that you have a lot to learn. Continue to feed that hunger for learning. You won’t ever have all the answers, and I can tell you that no-one actually does. Continue to ask the best questions you can, and as you do that you will continue to learn.

If you use your skills to serve others, including your employers, customers, and clients, you will always earn enough to provide for your family, so stop worrying about that and get on with it.

Above all, respect all other people. They are on a journey as well, they all have knowledge, and you will not always agree with them, but you will have to share this world with them.

I know that you want to have your own house and start a family, and you will achieve all those things. There is always a trade-off, though: the wonderful things that you aspire to come at a price. Don’t worry too much about whether everything will go to plan because there will be changes that you can’t see ahead of you, and the only way to deal with them is to stay true to your values; the values that are still being developed but have largely been formed by your family.

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