Found a letter I wrote at twenty and did not send. She was naïve,…

Found a letter I wrote at twenty and did not send. She was naïve, obviously, that part is not surprising. The strange part is that she was right about two things I later talked myself out of.

I have been assuming the arrow of improvement goes one way, that every year I am slightly less wrong. On the evidence it is more like a trade. I have gained a great deal of caution and lost some fairly accurate instincts, and nobody keeps a ledger of the second kind so you never notice the cost.