Manuel Santos, the guy playing the guitar on the night streets of Boston, is the one who helped me finally think of an answer for today’s prompt.

At first, I couldn’t think of what gets better with age. Of course, wisdom was the first one that came to mind. But I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe that. If wisdom truly got better with age, we would have a perfect society. Wisdom is relative to the generation and the changing times of the century, right?

The entire day today, different abstract concepts sprung into my mind: does wisdom get better with age? How about integrity? Nothing really seemed to fully fit into what I was trying to get at with this prompt.

At the end of the day, after returning from a movie with my friend, I saw a guy playing on the corner of Harvard Yard. He sang beautiful Spanish songs while strumming his guitar. I stopped to watch. Eventually, conversation between us struck. I learned his entire life story: how he fell in love with music, his wife, his kids and family, and more. His entire life has been filled with love.

When I asked his what advice he would have given to his 19 year old self, he told me: “I would say always follow your dreams and passion. Everyone has potential and something to give to this world. You must not let others sway you.”

And just like that, I realized that nothing actually gets better with age except your own ability to decide in who you are who you want to be.

Take me for example. Now that I’m older, I’m able to decide what my passions are and taken actions that align with them. It’s a truly gratifying feeling to be able to dance on the streets of Boston just because you decide you love dancing and are (conveniently) in Boston lol.

There are many reasons our ability to align with our passions improves with age. The first is that when growing up, we make mistakes and have regrets. We only regret the events and actions that don’t align with our higher purpose.

Second, we learn and observe from those around us to form our initial values. But when we are older, we are able to act in ways that don’t always fit with those around us. From this, we can tell whether or not we align with what we’ve been taught or if we need to change.

Third, as children we don’t exactly know enough about the world and ourselves to make decisions regarding who we are and what we want to be. However, children are free to discover, move, and behave in any way they choose to without fear of judgement (at least for a while). I do believe that moving freely like children is part of our biology that growing in our society has taken away from all of us. As adults, we have the power to make our own decisions, and part of that is overcoming the fear of societal judgement and/or rejection. This only comes with age and practice, or just never growing up at all I guess.

Anyway, it’s midnight here in Boston. I just wanted to write up a quick answer for the prompt. Thank you Manuel for helping me answer this question!

Till next time,
Moesha.