In my early twenties, a friend and I had an idea: we would travel through Switzerland for a few days by train and write letters to our future selves and to our future each others. At the end of the trip we put our letters in a box and bury them somewhere. Five years later we were to return to that place, retrieve the chest and read what our past selves had to tell us.

We actually did return five years later. But we never got to read those letters. We simply couldn’t find the box. We had buried it in some forest in the Centovalli valley in the Swiss-Italian border region. We had been in a hurry to catch our last train home, so we just haphazardly dug the box into the ground somewhere. Surely we’d remember where, we thought.

Of course, five years later, we had no clue.

We tried to communicate with our future selves. We wrote long letters about our lives, what we imagined, hoped and expected the future to be like. What we didn’t tell them was how to find these letters. We didn’t give them any clues where we had buried it. Our attempt at communication with our future selves failed because we failed to communicate. Oh the irony.

Lesson learnt

It was a painful lesson I learnt when I was digging my hands through the dirt in the rain for three hours, looking for that lost message from the past: how good you are at communicating with your future self directly impacts your ability to function as a human being – and your personal growth.

I take notes in class so my future self can read them when writing a paper. I put stuff in my calendar so my future self knows what’s happening on any given day. I put my keys in the little key box so my future self can take them with when he leaves the house.

Of course it gets tricky. Sometimes it’s hard to relate to my future self. There’s a mistake I often make when playing taboo: I see a word and instantly spout out all the things that come to my mind. That’s usually utterly unhelpful for the person listening and trying to figure out what you’re talking about. A more promising strategy is to empathize with this person and think about what they need to hear for the word to pop up in front of their inner eye.

Empathy takes work

But it takes work to constantly empathize with this person that doesn’t even exist yet. I’ve got my own stuff going on now, why should I care? Comedian Jerry Seinfeld famously talked about Night Guy who stays out late and does’t care about the looming headache and eye rings – because they’re Morning Guy’s problem.

And, of course, maybe Night Guy was right for not thinking about the next day. Maybe he had the time of his life. So if I don’t find my keys – I try to be kind to my past self. He probably had some stuff going on.

Hey, future Roman, if you read this: I hope you’re well and I hope you’re proud. This website, this blog, I’m doing this for you. Sorry for all the times I don’t make any sense to you. I’m doing my best.