Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what the me of the future will think of the me I am now. I tend to assume that the me of the future thinks I’m an idiot. I’m not sure exactly what it is about me that she’s so critical of, but she’d definitely give me an eye roll if she was here now.
This does seem to go counter to my experience, because I don’t think the me I was last year or two years ago was an idiot. In fact, sometimes I read over the papers she’s written and think she was much smarter than I am. I admire the way she would go running after work. The way she picked up and moved to California. I do sometimes think her weird for worrying so much about silly things when she should have been more bothered by her very uncertain future and that mounting debt, but I accept that she’s human.
I do sometimes think that 30-something me will laugh at my cynicism. She will relate more to hopeful teenage me and think of these as the dark, serious years. She will admire me for working so much, but think me silly for doing so. She’ll regret the way I didn’t have enough fun, didn’t let people in. She will wonder why I didn’t have more confidence.
But, I don’t think she’ll be as critical of me as I anticipate. She will know that the challenges I face are realer to me than they are to her and that I faced them with uncertainty and not perspective. She will have problems of her own yet to deal with and she will think these same silly things about what the Ashley of the future will think of her.
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With the advantage of hindsight and additional knowledge, it’s always easy to look back and be hard on yourself, but if you had good intentions and did your best, then I think that’s enough. We forget how tough situations were at the time, and we learn a lot from our experiences and mistakes. In the future you’ll probably be critical of your present self, but that’s just how people are. It doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot to be proud of right now.
Oh I often wonder this, too. I think my self from 5 years ago was so naive, so gullible, so determined yet in all the wrong ways. So insecure. I wish I could go back and tell her what I’ve learned since then. I hope my 30 yr old self will look back at me at 25 and say she was on the right track. :)
Our views on the world changes from day to day…Who we were, made us into who we are…
I actually do think our 30s will be easier. I think the 20s suck personally. There’s a lot of confusion and uncertainty and yes, cynicism.
I find it terribly interesting that you refer to the old you and the future you in terms of “she” as if a completely different person.
I think that this is such a neat concept. After reading this I found myself wondering the same thing. I like to hope that my future self looks back on this time of “figuring it out” and laughs. I also hope that my future self appreciates all the struggles, emotions, and feelings that have gone into making her who she is.