Letters from the future: What do I say to myself?

Amanda age 60-something & Amanda age 20-something: Am I there yet?

What am I doing and where am I going?

These are not unreasonable questions to ask, as the earth keeps spinning and the days and months keep unfolding bringing all the tomorrows that we call the future. What will it look like? That’s a bigger question than I can answer. What will I be doing? While equally big, for me, it’s a question worth pondering and, as is my wont, writing about.

Of course, putting words on the page as ideas and plans guarantees nothing; however, the words do give shape to — make concrete — the thoughts that float endlessly through my mind, landing nowhere and doing not necessarily very much for me. But the words on the page can be held in my hand and I can read them, review them anytime to remind me of what was important to me at one point in my past. And this re/viewing process allows me to assess today if those desires from the past still ring true for me — not a performance review, but a “desire review” if you will.

In the workshops I co-facilitate with Deborah Schnitzer, we use this technique as just one of our “writing as tool for transformation” activities. A personal favourite is when we write a letter to ourself from the future: Write a letter to yourself as you are today, but from the future. Write about where you are going or where you have arrived at or who you have become. What might you say to your current self from that future vantage point?

This is not magical thinking. This is not about wishing something into being. This is a creative exercise in imagination and accountability. Of course, just because we put words on the page doesn’t mean that what they describe will come to be; however, putting words onto the page can bring clarity to both our desires and our perspective.

Time and again in our workshops, participants exclaim at the shift in tone in their voice from the future — it’s often more hopeful and joyful than expected; and it is often very clear about the possibilities of their future self that their current self could not see.

This is not magic.

This is personal reflection and responsibility in practice — personal accountability to our desire lines, if you will. Below, I offer two of my own as examples.

LETTERS TO MYSELF FROM THE FUTURE — and a death notice, too

Letter One, written in February 2021 / dated five years into the future (which is now only two years away!)

Indeed, I kept going and, later that same year, wrote the next letter to myself from the future. 

Letter Two, written in November 2021 / dated five years into the future

I didn't get started on the handbook mentioned in Letter Two until last summer (2023) and, today, it sits in draft form on my “current projects” shelf, niggling at my conscience to open its cover and keep working on it. I shall, I know that, though I don’t yet know when. However, the weekend writing retreat mentioned in this second letter is on the schedule for THIS SUMMER! I had forgotten that I had written about it.

Regardless of anything else, time passes no matter how we fill it. So as I re-read my own death notice, which I wrote that same November in 2021, I realize I had better get on with things — time waits for no one, moves at an increasingly fast pace, and disappears out from under us if we’re not mindful of its passage. A book of my essays won't write itself!

Why not try it yourself? Write to yourself from five years into the future. Draft your own death notice. See what arises, what shows up on the page. It might surprise you ... and motivate you to head down that desire line you didn't even realize is stretching out before you. 

..............................................................................................................

To receive my weekly blogpost in your inbox, use the SUBSCRIBE feature (above, in the left-hand column), or email fiveyearsawriter at gmail dot com. Put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. 

Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.