the gift of being young & dumb: reflections on my old ass (2024)
This post is the first in a two-part series reflecting on the film My Old Ass. Check out the whole series.
So far all of the posts I’ve written for this blog have been focused on movies and media from my past. They’ve all been movies I already knew I wanted to write about because I already knew there was great relationship and mental health content. Today’s post is about the film My Old Ass, directed by Megan Park. It’s the first movie I’m posting that’s new to me; I watched it not knowing whether I would want to write about it. Turns out, I definitely do! This post is the first of two, I hope you’ll join me next week for the next installment.
a fresh coming-of-age story
My Old Ass a coming-of-age film. Fun fact: this genre was my favorite when I was a librarian because it is officially cataloged as “bildungsroman,” which I think is a very strange and delightful word. But anyway, back to the movie. My Old Ass is a fresh take on the genre, and even though I’ve read dozens of books and seen maybe hundreds of films in this genre, it left me with an “aha” feeling. Just a head’s up, I reveal a pretty major spoiler in this post toward the end.
meeting your future self at age 18
the elliot / future-elliott dynamic
My Old Ass takes place in present day, beginning with the main character, Elliott, celebrating her 18th birthday on a camping trip with her two best friends. They decide to take mushrooms together, and Elliott hallucinates her future self, a 39-year old PhD student, whom I will refer to as Future Elliott. The interaction begins with present-day Elliott (just Elliott, going forward), incredulous that she’s talking to her future self, saying “Your teeth. Those aren’t my teeth. There’s a fucking gap in your teeth,” to which Future Elliott offers some sage advice: “Yeah dude, fuck you. Wear your retainer.”
Future Elliott also offers other advice, like don’t take your life for granted, and “Go hang out with your brothers.” She then stores her number in Elliott’s phone, leading to ongoing chats throughout the film. Mysteriously, Future Elliott also tells her young self “Can you avoid anyone named Chad?” which is advice she repeats over and over again. And we all know Elliott will absolutely not be avoiding Chad, so here we go.
inner child work in real life
I’m going to switch gears for a moment, then come back to the Elliotts and Chad. As a trauma-informed therapist, there’s an approach I use with my clients that’s often quite effective. It’s an effort at connecting with our past self, often a quite young version of who we are.
how we talk to our past selves
We can be pretty hard on ourselves for some of our ingrained manners of coping. We can see the pattern, and we can see it’s not working. Yet we feel helpless to change it. Digging into these coping mechanisms is an exercise in self-compassion for our past selves because something about circumstances in the past taught us that this was the best way to do things.
For example, when we shut down and disengage when our partner is trying to have a tough conversation with us, it may be because we were taught to expect punishment for sharing our feelings when we were young. It was an important survival skill given the environment our little baby self inhabited. But it’s not working now.
Instead of shaming our sweet little past self, we can acknowledge how effective it was to shut down and that our past self was a great problem-solver for coming up with this solution. We can thank our past self for it. And that part of ourself that’s still hiding out, deep inside our nervous system, trying to keep us safe–we can thank them and let them know that our adult self can take it from here. Our adult self can engage in tough conversations and also keep us safe.
when your younger self becomes the teacher
This is a conversation I have often with my clients. Offering our past self gratitude and granting grace, while letting our present-day self take the reins. It was humbling to watch My Old Ass because I think I sometimes forget that connecting with our past self isn’t always an exercise that should end with placing a higher value on how our present-day self handles problems. Sometimes our younger self needs to tell us what’s up. And 18-year old Elliott is going to tell us what’s up.
“Sometimes our younger self needs to tell us what’s up.”
losing & reclaiming our creative courage
It reminds me of those studies about creativity where up to a certain age, everyone believes themselves to be an artist. Over time, fewer and fewer people see themselves as an artist. We are jaded about the world, we become self-conscious, we feel like there’s a way we’re supposed to be. We come to see idealism as naiveté. It can erode our connection to the core of who we are over time.
Elliott is fearless and confident. Kind of dramatic, lots of big feels. Idealistic in the way that many of us are in our teens and 20s. During the mushroom trip, Future Elliott becomes exasperated with Elliott’s sense of disappointment about the [completely acceptable and lovely] life her future self is leading and says “Dude, what the fuck? Did you honestly think that you were gonna be married and have multiple kids and your dream job by the time you were 40? Oh. You did. Ok.”
The familiar facial expression of having to deal with a teenager being young and dumb.
When Elliott ponders whether her future self would like her if they met each other as strangers at a party, Future Elliott delivers some good news about what’s coming. “You wanna know what’s one of the best things about getting older?” she asks. “You stop worrying so much about if other people like you.” It can be easy to dismiss someone’s wisdom when they still carry the youthful flaws that most of us are relieved to outgrow.
the truth about chad revealed (spoiler alert)
For this reason, Future Elliott becomes quite comfortable in her role as advice-giver. She feels confident in continuing to reinforce the mandate that Elliott needs to stay away from Chad, even as it becomes clear that Elliott is falling for him. Eventually Elliott successfully goads her future self into revealing why she should stay away: he dies.
“Chad dies. And he dies after you have fallen so madly in love with him that you can’t see straight, ok? After you can’t imagine loving anybody else ever again,” Future Elliott says. “Elliott, it is so hard. It is so so hard. And I do not want you to have to feel that shit.”
It is here that we come to see the depth of wisdom of the younger self. Elliott comes back with “No, I’m gonna fall in love with Chad. I’m gonna love him so hard for however long we have,” to which Future Elliott says “Yeah you’re just saying that because you’re young and dumb.”
the case for being young & dumb sometimes
Elliott doesn’t need me to speak for her, so rather than summarizing, I’m just going to share her whole soliloquy:
“Ok but if you weren’t young and dumb, you’d never fucking be brave enough to do anything. If you knew how shitty and unfair life would be, you’d never leave your house. You’d never enjoy spending time with anyone because you’d just be thinking about the fact that they’re gonna die someday. But when you’re young and dumb, you don’t even think about that. And that’s what lets you actually live. So maybe being young and dumb isn’t such a bad thing, have you ever thought about that?”
“Ok but if you weren’t young and dumb, you’d never fucking be brave enough to do anything.”
Most of us can be hard on our past selves. Thank goodness that in many ways we do actually experience an expansion of wisdom and the softening of our sharpest edges as we grow older. But our past selves are still cool as shit, each in their own way, and they’re cool as shit because they don’t know shit.
me & my young, dumb self
My young self was a bold decision-maker, she spoke up when she saw injustice regardless of any possible consequences, and she was willing to try pretty much anything that interested her. I still carry a lot of these traits, just with the volume turned down. Watching My Old Ass is prompting me to examine whether there are times I need that volume turned up every once in a while, and I’m grateful for that. Here’s to acting young and dumb sometimes.
creativity for your young, dumb self
Regarding my aside about people feeling less and less inclined to identify as an artist as they grow older, I wanted to share some of my favorite books about creativity.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be the Artist You Really Are by Danny Gregory
The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
Creative Quest by Questlove
Another film that comes to mind when I think of an adult needing to tap into the wisdom of youthfulness is Laggies. I’ll be back next week with more My Old Ass. Take care.
Thank you for reading! I’m Trina, and I’m a therapist in Texas. I wrote this post myself using my own words and ideas. I used AI to help me optimize titles, headings, keywords, and meta descriptions for SEO purposes. AI also gave me some tips on how to share this post on social media. I will always let you know if/when/how I use AI in my blog posts.
If you’re in Texas and looking for a therapist, give me a shout. I’d love to learn more about you and your story.
