Brain Food #788: Our younger selves know better
"Everything else is a bonus"
As I was writing Wednesday’s post, I started thinking about the house of actress Tilda Swinton, pictured below. It is in the town of Nairn in the Scottish Highlands, with a population of roughly 10k. Swinton, at the age of 61, can be described as anything but retired from life.
In an interview for Vogue magazine, she said:
“Well, I’ve never had any ambition as an artist. That may sound crazy and transgressive, but it’s a fact. If you’d asked me when I was 10 or 20, I would have said my only ambitions were to live in a family, to have friends that made me laugh and laughed at my jokes, and to live in the Highlands of Scotland, by the sea with a lot of dogs and a kitchen garden. Seriously. And I have been really blessed to be able to achieve them. Everything else is a bonus. Everything else is just icing and candles and flowers alongside.”
And about living in a city, in a different interview: “I love cities for what they do. But once you live in a place like this, you kind of lose your way in a city.”
How many of our ambitions and desires are not really ours, and have been created by the environment we are in?
Our younger selves sometimes know better.
Thank you for reading today’s Brain Food. Brain Food is a short newsletter that aims to make you think without taking up too much of your time. If you know someone who would like this post, consider spreading the word and forwarding it to them.
Brain Food wouldn’t exist without the support of its readers. By subscribing to Brain Food, you strengthen its ongoing existence:
For longer thoughts and Brain Food highlights from the archives, visit Medium.