Instructions for the Next Reincarnation

Issued by The Soul Continuity Bureau | Cycle ID: 743-B | Clearance: Rebirth Pending

Congratulations on completing your previous incarnation. While we noted multiple deviations from your soul’s original blueprint (see Appendix D: "The Year You Chose Silence"), you are hereby approved for another cycle of sentient experience. To enhance your progression and avoid repeating lessons already taught (and ignored), please review the following instructions carefully before entering the body.

1. Do Not Be Born in a Hurry

Time, though mortal, will beg you to race.

Refuse it.

Avoid wombs pulsing with expectation or hospitals that hum like factories.

Instead, choose a quiet mother—one who sings lullabies to her garden and names stars after her unborn.

She will teach you to arrive gently.

2. Be Wary of Beautiful Lies

In your last life, you fell in love with someone’s potential and called it destiny.

This time, pay attention to how people treat waiters, stray cats, and silence.

Fall in love with kindness, not charisma.

Fall in love with someone who asks how you slept and listens to the answer.

Not with the ones who only hear what they want to believe.

3. Avoid the Town by the River

There is a place where your spirit drowned once—not in water, but in noise.

You were seventeen.

You smiled too often. You forgave too easily.

They took your voice and dressed it up as politeness.

This time, do not live there.

If you find yourself near the river, turn around.

There is nothing for you in its reflection.

4. Speak Even When It Shakes

Your throat is a cathedral.

Stop making it a graveyard.

In your past life, you swallowed too many apologies meant for others.

You let the world mistake your silence for peace.

This time, raise your voice.

Even if it cracks. Even if your ancestors flinch.

5. You Will Meet Her Again

She will not look the same.

Last time, she was a boy in your class with ink-stained fingers who smelled like cinnamon and bad decisions.

This time, she might be a grandmother in a laundromat or a stranger who gives you an umbrella in the rain.

You will know her by the way time softens in her presence.

Do not walk away again.

You never forgave yourself for that.

6. Your Rage Is Not a Curse

We noticed you tried to hide it beneath poetry and sarcasm.

Your fire is not shameful.

It is the forge.

Use it to build, not burn.

But never let them convince you to freeze.

7. There Are Places You Must Not Die

a) In a job that empties you faster than it pays you

b) At a dinner table where your name is mispronounced and your truth dismissed

c) In a relationship where your dreams have to apologize for existing

If death finds you in any of these places, you will be recycled—not reincarnated.

8. Forgive, But Not Immediately

Forgiveness is sacred, not urgent.

Wait until your forgiveness tastes like freedom, not surrender.

Do not let guilt write your boundaries for you.

It was never meant to hold the pen.

9. You May Still Fail

Even with all this, you may love the wrong people, abandon the right cities, choose comfort over growth.

You may forget these instructions by age nine.

You may remember them too late.

That is okay.

The universe is patient with those who try.

10. Love Boldly. Lose Beautifully. Repeat.

You were not made for safety.

You were not sent here to survive it all intact.

You are here to touch, to bruise, to bloom.

To love like spring in rebellion against frost.

And when it ends—when your bones forget your name—

return here.

We will be waiting with new instructions.

Maybe next time, we’ll remind you how to fly.

End of Transmission.

Please close your eyes now. Breathe in. When you exhale, the sky will open. And your next story will begin.