Dan hand wrote this letter to himself sometime around late 2000/early 2001. He was 19.

Dear Me:

Life is about intelligence, about survival, and about being fun. First you have to do what you need to. Then you need to do what makes sense. Then you have to do what’s most fun.

Society likes to put a lot of limits on the world. Society likes to dictate how things “should” be. Usually society’s dictates don’t really make sense.

Kids aren’t stupid, they know what you teach them. If they don’t know something, teach them. They’re people just like you, they have brains just like you, they can understand concepts just like you.

There isn’t a set way people are supposed to act. Often people act irrationally. Often there’s more than one rational response to a situation. There are wrong ways to act, but there are no single right ones.

Originality is a key to a fluid world. Without new ideas, new reactions, the world stagnates. It’s my goal to make people think, to make people feel, to make people see past societal stagnation. The question “Why?” holds the world in its letters. It’s not wrong to ask, or to demand, an answer.

Pointless rules just add hardship to a world that’s hard to live in to begin with. If something doesn’t make sense, ask when and why it did. Decide if the answer still holds today. Because reason and common sense will change over time. The world needs to be willing to change. People need to have the courage to change it.

DFogg