It's beautiful. My feeling was that the old man was the young man as an old man, advising his younger self. 🤷‍♂️

"A young man had entered his true calling to bring the water of life to those in need, and the young man would be provided for every day, and in every way by those he helped. Such would be the young man’s reward."

I feel that was you speaking to me.

I've only written one fiction, though it's autobiographical fiction if that's what one calls fiction with facts of the writer's life as the skeleton. I'm proud of it. https://medium.com/total-fiction/a-dragon-gets-his-wish-77457c10ec29

You mentioned you wrote this 20 years ago and published it to Medium 4 years ago. I wrote my first self-expository essay in December 2013. I didn't write again until after Lindsey (you might often see me refer to her as Sitara--I interchange the human and soul names as I do my own) died in 2020. I published that first writing love on Medium shortly after joining in Sept 2020. It's still my cherished firstborn. It's a 17-minute read so I'll understand ... https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/self-portrait-in-essay-form-circa-12-2013-7bdac6f1510e

In many ways, it's the outline for everything that ensued.

Are you in Chicago? Am I recalling correctly or imagining? My daughter is STEM at Northwestern. I wrote this when she was accepted Dec 2021. https://medium.com/illumination/a-fathers-pride-and-joy-6838f4d059e6