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Meghan Markle recently “revealed” that almost every night before bed, she sends her young kids an email. They go to an address that the kids will have access to when they’re older, and will be full of little memories of growing up. “I thought it was such a great time capsule to create for them,” she told a podcast host.
Because it’s Meghan Markle, this got a strong reaction. Namely: That’s so many emails. But it’s not a totally bad idea! And you don’t have to be a parent to do it. For years now, every spring, I get an email—OK, yes, just one—from my past self.
I started sending these emails my junior year of high school. A classmate told me about the site “Future Me,” where you could write a letter and have it delivered to your inbox at any point in the future. I had journaled for years, and often reread my old entries to reflect. But I was intrigued by the time capsule–esque idea of writing something that would only come back to me at a later time.
That year, at 17, my entry was primarily a rant against my friends at the time, and my desire to be able to just graduate already. A lot of teenage angst. But I also wrote about what I was proud of that year, and my hopes for 2018 Hannah—and gave my future self some wise words I hoped she’d remember as she headed off to college that coming fall. “College will be a great experience for you to get out of your comfort zone, take advantage of whatever resources are offered, and meet new people,” I wrote. Reading it the following year was extremely gratifying. I loved seeing how far I had come—and how many of the grievances I had aired in the original letter had simply been resolved.
It’s now become an annual ritual. Each time I get an email from past Hannah, I take a few days to think about my biggest takeaways from the prior year and what I want to remind my future self of. It’s incredibly cathartic when I send it into the void, letting the FutureMe gods do the rest. You could pick whatever timing, but I like the fact that this time of year is out of step with the typical “reflection” cycle of the new year. The letter usually comes at the end of May or the beginning of June, so just about halfway through the year. And because of this, it aligns well with certain milestones, most notably graduations from high school and college.
Sure, you could just stuff a letter in a drawer and come back to it at a later time. I personally didn’t trust myself to remember it or not open it. And as Meghan Markle put it, when it comes to physical nostalgia like scrapbooks, “we’re past that generation now.”
The FutureMe platform is free (though they take donations to keep it running), and lets you send at any point in the future, so you could go the full Markle and send your much older self a ton of notes. But I’ve found that annually is a nice cadence. And even though I’ve been doing it for years, I don’t fully remember when the email is coming, so it’s a nice surprise. I should be getting my next one soon, though. Here’s hoping 2024 me has some wisdom for the year ahead.
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