It was a long time before I understood what “Do yourself a favour” meant.
There’s a Past Ben and a Future Ben and Me.
For a long time, I didn’t give Future Ben much thought.
I knew about Past Ben, who I didn’t like very much because he was perpetually screwing Me over.
But Future Ben was smart and young enough to handle the consequences of whatever bullshit I wanted to do at the time; to pay this or that debt or worry or pay the price of whatever I wanted to do at the time.
One night a few years back, I had a dream about Future Ben and he was in a very sorry state indeed. And all he said was, “Why? Why did you do this to me?”
After that, I started to do little things to look out for Future Ben — doing him a little favour now and then — because he wasn’t getting any younger.
And sure enough, Past Ben started cleaning up his act, and I didn’t have such a mess to worry about.
And that just made it easier to do myself a favour more often.