Hello Younger/Future Me!
On keeping lines of communication open between your past & future selves
There’s something amazing and surreal about hearing from your past self. Sometimes, it’s like having an insightful conversation with yourself. Or being a therapist listening to the rants of your patient and objectively observing their narcissistic and ridiculous thoughts.
Keeping lines of communication open between your past and future self is like a heady dose of nostalgia that I keep going back to through journaling and letters to my future self.
On journaling
I’ve been journaling since I was around ten years old. I’ve always been excited over stationery so one of my first destinations whenever my parents took I and my siblings to a supermarket was the stationery aisle to peruse their collection of pretty notebooks and pretty pens (cheers to Amigo supermarket for living up to young Fatima’s stationery expectations).
I was also obsessed with having pretty handwriting as a child and loved writing cringey stories about stubborn children.
With all of these, plus watching Disney shows where the main characters kept diaries, it was inevitable for me to fall into the hands of journaling.
For the purpose of this newsletter, I dug up all my journals that I haven’t looked over in a while. I have nine of them that span 2012-2023. That’s over ten years!
I started with the oldest entries from 2012 and the level of cringe is maddening along with the ridiculous seriousness with which I viewed my problems—not getting the highest score in my class on a test, visiting day being too far away, the school giving us only one gala and a bottle of coke to celebrate independence day (although that makes sense, the economy was good back then, c’mon). But there was so much to laugh about and be surprised over.
I also had pages dedicated to pictures of my classmates and friends where they signed their names and wrote stuff like ‘fweshest, rock diva, smack lips, luv ya, sexy lady, fab’ and so much more good stuff that I can send to the people I still talk to and use to blackmail them.
It also contained some mean things I wrote about both myself and others that are mean in the way children are at that age.
As I shared some of these gems with one of my friends, she said life was pretty cool back then and I told her how I hate that I spent so much time complaining in my journal when things weren’t so bad. She reminded me that those problems were probably ‘that bad’ then and it made me realise that past problems seem minute and irrelevant only because we’ve gone through them already and have learned what we needed to from them.
As I inched nearer to 2023, I saw epiphanies and turning points and the mandatory journal entry I do before every birthday. I saw things I struggled with that I’ve forgotten which show I’ve grown. I saw old ways of thinking I’ve unlearned and how much of a different person I am.
It’s always so much fun being able to have a portal that takes you back and gives you the chance to see things from younger you’s perspective. I like that it’s a way for me to remind myself of lessons I’ve already learned but forgotten and patterns I need to change (like how much I need to change the pattern of complaining and replace it with gratitude:).
On letters to your future self
A friend of mine introduced me to FutureMe which is a platform where you can send surprise letters to yourself from the past. My friend sends herself a letter on her birthday and I started doing the same.
I love reading letters from myself. I get excited that past me took the time to sit and write something to future me.
It helps that I always forget what I wrote so when I see the letter in my email I’m always curious to know what it holds.
I never write things like by this time you should have done this, or done that. I feel as if movies have educated us enough on why writing things like ‘you’ll be married right now with three kids and the perfect partner and perfect job’ is not smart.
Because aside from the fact that you’re allowed to grow and change and want other things, certain parts of your life shouldn’t have deadlines attached to them; especially when they’re barely in your control.
I want to write more letters though. I saw someone who talked about writing love letters to themself at the start of every month. Maybe I’d do that and send them to future me.
In conclusion of why you should keep in touch with your past selves:
All of your past selves are extremely important because each one of them needed to exist for who you are today to exist. They all have something to tell you whether by documenting the present or speaking directly to future you.
Plus it’s just really fun to hear from past you :)
Do you keep journals or write letters to future you? What are your thoughts? Do you think all of this is stupid and weird? Let me know what you think in the comments or feel free to reply directly to this email. Thanks for reading!
Note to future Fatima: I know you’ll forget all of this and have to come back here to remind yourself of why you should keep contact with past you. When you do, know I am really proud of you for writing this despite the self-doubt and procrastination and life life-ing. Thank you for being consistent so far with the newsletter and I love you <3
i love how you put this—keeping a line of communication between past and future you, that's such a nice way to look at it. also loving the journal stack hehe