Youth is wasted on the young.

You’ll never imagine just how much you would change in 15 years, but there it is. Your youth is wasted on you. Oh, how I wish I had your vigor, your power, your strength, your passion, your fearlessness. How I wish I could transport my wisdom to you and tell you, “Your whole life is very much ahead of you. Don’t waste it watching it go by thinking you only had one chance at life, and that one chance you lost when you made a bad decision.”

How I wish I could tell you that life doesn’t end at the gravest of mistakes, but merely takes a turn – and that life goes on, giving you so many chances and so many opportunities. You know you were that talented, and you know what you wanted right from the beginning. Oh, maybe you were confused, and maybe you were unsure of yourself – but you knew! You knew right from when Xavier drew it out of you that you only wanted to do one thing in your life. You knew that whatever you do, life would always bring you back to your one passion, your one dream, your one great talent.

But life had other plans for you. And maybe it was just right that you lost your way. For how else could you have found the greatest happiness of your life if you didn’t branched off that unbeaten path. How else could you have gained this insight I’m giving you now if you never experienced so much sorrow and so much heartbreak? Yeah, maybe it was for the best you lost your way. Inside that bleak, dark forest, you found a treasure so much more precious than what joy you could have found raring through life as the fiery, carefree centaur that you were.

Your youth was wasted on you. But I’m glad you did waste that youth. It gave me the chance to enjoy the twilight years of my life surrounded by things you would’ve bucked as you are now. You bristled at responsibility, and you hated being shackled. You wanted nothing to do with family and the only things you thought that could make you happy were sex and wild parties.

Well, maybe the future you still think that too. Except he knows that that happiness is merely fleeting and temporary. He knows that the vagaries of fate could swiftly take away all that he holds dear and that he must therefore cherish the best of them for he knows not when his time will come. And time indeed is so short that everyday of his life he wishes that he could put time in a bottle and put it away, never to let it move past one second. He wishes so much he could have spent more time living life instead of merely enduring it. He wishes he could have held your hand and told you, “Despair not, your whole life is ahead of you. You will give it all up anyway for that one joy you’ll never imagine you’ll have. So stop moping and stop whiling away your days in dark brooding and useless pastimes. You’ll never regret the regrets you have now in the future. Trust me.”

I love you and I hope you realize that the future that’s waiting for you is as sweet and as triumphant than anything you’ll ever dreamed of. So endure those heartaches and those disappointments – for everything is worth their time and their pain, with their weight measured in gold and diamonds. The heavier your heart is, the sweeter the joy that is waiting for you.

And that’s no lie, for I am You, and You are me, and this is Us – this is Us saying goodbye to the fleeting, evanescence joy that life is. Have fun getting to know your son. Be patient with him. Losing your patience with him is the only regret you’ll ever really have in your life. Live life my friend. Live life with your son and never look back. Adieu.