Dear Ayn Rand

How a letter I wrote 50 years ago popped up again and changed things

This is a piece about what happens when you take a risk and reach out of your comfort zone to say or do something daring. It’s about looking at your much-younger self and being influenced by her.

What happened

A few weeks ago I received an email from a literature professor in Virginia inquiring about a letter I had written to Ayn Rand (a 20th century Russian American writer and philosopher). She was working on a biographical project and found the letter among the philosopher’s papers. She was curious about the origins of the letter, if there was anything I was willing to share about my interest in her and if Ms. Rand had ever replied to my letter. She also concluded, after an internet search, that I “seem to have lived a fascinating and rewarding life”.

This email threw me into a bit of a tailspin because

1) I had no recollection of having written the letter and certainly hadn’t thought about that time 50 years ago for a long while

2) I couldn’t imagine what my 20 year old self could have said to the famous writer about the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant.