The Overdose That Changed My 20s

NYT OPINION: The Overdose That Changed My 20s
By Christer Wahlberg
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: March 7, 2023 at 02:00AM

When a director gets hold of an action movie he and his best friend made two decades ago, he reconsiders the risks they took as young men.

After the birth of my first daughter, I wanted to protect her at any cost. As I worried about what could happen to her, I started to think about the person she would be as a teenager. Would she be as limitless as I was as a young adult, pushing at the boundaries of her life?
During this time, I rediscovered an old movie I made with my best friend when we were 20. It immediately brought me back to the early 2000s and the wild — and at times destructive — fun of my youth. I felt a flood of nostalgia for that time: the clothes we wore, the bravado in our voices, the friendship we had.
But I look back at that time with mixed feelings. I see a boy who’s insecure, who feels unseen and unheard and takes a lot of risks to escape those feelings. But I also see a boy excited about the future who wants to change his life and who’s dreaming big.
Though I wish I could change the past, I just have to live with it. Today I can’t understand the risks we took back then. But when you’re young, you don’t have time to think of death.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/y2k-youth.html