I just received a mysterious email. “Dear Wilfred,” it began. “You better be a baller by this time. You better have a hot wife and kids. I hope you have a Porsche. If not, I don’t know what is wrong with you man.”
The 280-word message, which arrived in my inbox this week, on the morning of my 31st birthday, was actually from someone who I knew well: myself, exactly 10 years ago.
It went on: “I’m just kidding. None of those things really matter. I just hope you’re living a good life, being a good person to the people around you, and not losing your sense of wonder about the world.”
Since I was a teenager, I’ve been sending messages to the future using a free email service called FutureMe, which is kind of like a digital time capsule. It’s simple: you compose an email, enter a recipient, and select a date in the future. Once you submit it, your note is sealed away in FutureMe’s servers and won’t send until that date, which could be years or decades later.
In a time of dopamine-drenched social media feeds, this might well be the world’s slowest messaging service.
The site was launched in 2002, as a side project of Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios, programmers who were then in their 20s. Sly told me he had designed the site to be “super streamlined” so that it would be able to run indefinitely – at first the server costs were just $11 a month.
Now, despite handling 10,000 to 20,000 emails every day, the server costs just a couple of hundred dollars a month and brings in far more in revenue, Sly said. He sold FutureMe to a digital memorials company last year but feels confident about its longevity.
“The cool thing is the longer it’s around, the more kind of profound these experiences are, because 10, 15, 20 years is a long time,” said Sly, who writes about 10 letters to his future self every year. “It’s intense, as you experienced.”
The first time I used this time machine, a high school crush and I sat next to each other just before we graduated and sent letters to each other one year in the future. She stayed in our home town; I moved across the country and got her email the next winter, during a snowfall in my lonely first semester.
She wrote: “Right now, your probably somewhere in new york city, seeing amazing things, feeling amazing things. Amazing things that i probably can’t even imagine. I am REALLY REALLY excited, nervous, happy for you! I know you’ll become the person you want to be.”
I mostly forgot about the service until I turned 21, when I got a short note from 17-year-old me congratulating me on being old enough to buy alcohol. (“Now go DRINKING!!!!” teenage me urged.)
My 17-year-old self would be disappointed to learn I didn’t end up getting hammered that day. Instead, I penned the heartfelt letter to 31-year-old me.
“I hope you can remember what it felt like to be 21,” young me wrote. “Because I have no idea what I want to do with my life right now, but it’s okay. Because I do have faith that things are going to find a way to work themselves out.”
As I read it, I felt memories of the last decade wash over me. Twenty-one-year-old me would never have predicted that I would start my career in Hong Kong, as a journalist covering its tragic democracy movement. That I would return to New York City years later and work for a while delivering food. That we would face a pandemic amid resurgent white supremacy and accelerating climate catastrophe.
Other things really did work out. I don’t have a wife or kids, but I am in a lovely relationship. I’ve stayed close with old friends and met new ones who have been there for me through many highs and lows. I now write full-time for publications I admired when I was younger. And 21-year-old me would be thrilled to know that marijuana is now legal in New York.
Too often, when I think about the past, I fixate on the moments of pain and confusion. Or I dwell upon other dreams I had then that never came to pass. But the letter helped me celebrate the most important victories (“I hope you haven’t died yet, because that would actually kind of suck,” 21-year-old me noted). And it revealed that I didn’t need external success to grasp life’s bigger picture.
“I can say, today, at age 21, I have no regrets so far,” I wrote. “I hope you don’t regret anything that’s happened since then. This world is far too beautiful to be wasting your time looking back and wishing you had done things differently.”
I need to hold on to this. But life happens, and I’m sure I’ll forget it again. That’s why I’m going to send a message to my 41-year-old self. I’m going to tell him, truthfully, that I feel grateful for what I have. And remind him that the real challenge of adulthood isn’t getting ahead – but getting back to an understanding that the world is beautiful and limitless.
The complete letter from 21-year-old me
Dear Wilfred,
You better be a baller by this time. You better have a hot wife and kids. I hope you have a Porsche. If not, I don’t know what is wrong with you man.
I’m just kidding. None of those things really matter. I just hope you’re living a good life, being a good person to the people around you, and not losing your sense of wonder about the world. It’s never too late to do that shit you’ve always wanted to do. It’s never too late to learn that thing you always wanted to learn. I can say, today, at age 21, I have no regrets so far. I hope you don’t regret anything that’s happened since then. This world is far too beautiful to be wasting your time looking back and wishing you had done things differently.
I hope you can remember what it felt like to be 21. Because I have no idea what I want to do with my life right now, but it’s okay. Because I do have faith that things are going to find a way to work themselves out. So I’m actually just going to trust that as you read this, you’ll be nodding your head, because things did end up working out okay despite all your doubts and fears. I’m trusting that you’re well. Actually, now that I think of it, I hope you haven’t died yet, because that would actually kind of suck … but hey, not ruling it out …
Anyway, I love you. Have a drink with me in celebration that you made it this far. Smoke some weed, if you’re not working for the government by now.
Happy birthday, man.
Wilfred
