“Darling, I’m sure you’ll be given your own little rule book from school, a list of things to do and not to do. And we’ll read that together. But I also want you to give this a once over. And decide for yourself what to take from it, if anything at all.
1. Don’t be yourself.
The entire world will tell you to be yourself. Don’t. Be anyone you want, any day of the week, any hour of the day. Be a princess, be a frog, be a rocket, be the wind, be a rock, be an island, be one of those characters from Doraemon. Keep experimenting, keep evolving, keep surprising everyone. Keep surprising yourself.
2. Be social. But only if you want to.
3. Hear your teacher.
4. Cry.
5. Hit back.
6. Go outside your group.
7. Zebras are not black and white.
8. Share everything. Especially food.
9. Don’t put your hand up.
10. Fail Harder.
You’ll never have either Ma or me giving you a dressing down if you’ve failed in class. Failing is fine. By failing, you learn to try harder. Or, ditch that subject altogether. I ditched Maths just before class 11. I gave my final exams with 6 subjects while the rest of my friends had 7. It’s important to identify what you don’t like. And the sooner, the better. It helps you find the things you do like.
About Bodhi
Bodhisatwa, or Bodhi as he is fondly known in the advertising circus is an obsessive, compulsive writer. When he’s not writing ads for a target audience he hasn’t met, he’s writing the first line of books that he won’t write. And when he’s not writing that, he’s writing about irrelevant things that have no implication in the macrocosm of things. Bodhi hates long words. Like obituary. And when the time is ripe, he’ll write his own, thank you very much.