I recently learned that there are ways you can send an email message to yourself on some specified date and time in the near or far future. Leaving aside questions of technology change, possible data loss, and shifting email addresses, for some reason I’m having a hard time thinking about what I would want to email to my future self. One of the reasons I keep a journal is to let my future self know what life is like now, so in a sense I’m already talking to my future self. And we’re all dealing with our future selves all the time, making commitments on their behalf (like marrying, or having a child, or buying a house) and sometimes spending their money. But is there anything specific I’d want to say to my older self?
Most of the useful communication I can imagine between older and younger selves would go the other way. I want to tell my various younger selves things like: Don’t worry, it turns out to be benign. Keep going with the algebra; you’re going to need it later. Don’t microwave food in plastic containers, and stay away from trans-fats. You know that trip you were thinking of taking to Phoenix to talk to Mom and tape-record some of her family stories? Do it now. Don’t wait till next spring.
But future selves…other than telling them the whereabouts of the important papers that got filed somewhere safe (so safe that it’s hidden even from yourself), what would you say? Some people have made their messages public, and you can read them at FutureMe.org. People have pep talks and advice and conditional apologies for their future selves, along with birthday and graduation greetings. They speculate about what life will be like. (People seem particularly curious about their love lives, although one guy asks optimistically, “How does it feel to be rich?”) Some have other questions, although I can imagine future selves being befuddled by them if they’ve forgotten the context (what policy paper? Jason who?). I think the funniest one I saw, sent one year into the future, said, “Did you ever get that rash checked out?” My favorites are the ones that describe what’s going on in the writer’s life. I guess what I’d send might be a description of an ordinary day in my life right now. The details of everyday life are among the things that fade from memory the soonest, but if you recall them, they can be the most evocative of what life used to feel like. I can’t think of anything that would better resurrect a past time for a future self.
