Johnny

Have you ever wished for a future version of yourself to walk by you and tell you everything is going to be alright? Or maybe you've wished to speak to your past self, telling him or her to give up on that relationship, or buy Bitcoin or Nvidia stocks. Today I found a way to access the former.

I was walking in Central Park when I came up with a list of what I wanted to tell my past self. The list is as follows:

Don't cheat on yourself. I often hear people talk about things they've learned in college. Even though almost no one remembers all of the information from a class, a lot of people have taken away small snippets. Maybe it was even something the professor talked about on a tangent. I do not have such memories. This is weird because I graduated from a prestigious college with mostly A's. I did everything to avoid learning. I thought I was smarter than most people because I could do very little work and get the same grades. I thought I hacked the system. I got to drink more beers and see more friends and ultimately received the same transcript. But I didn't cheat the system. I cheated myself. Now, many people will say college taught them how to think. This may be the same for me but I don't believe I took away from college nearly as much as I should have.

Invest in friendships. Wow, generic advice I know. But here's the nuance I'll add to it. Friends you meet over loud music and 5+ drinks usually don't stay friends. But friends you spend the night playing board games with, and friends who you stay up talking to, usually do. Maybe that's why you are closer to your high school friends than your college ones.

Buy them that dinner. Just pay for your friend's dinner. Can you remember the time a friend randomly offered to pay for your meal or drinks? Felt nice, right? They would probably feel the same.

Live in the moment. There is nothing I wouldn't give to go back in time and relive my college, high school, or middle school years. This is a common thought held by many people. I may have fallen into the trap of nostalgia and romanticizing the past, and I may have worried too much about the next coming thing. The two can both be true. Since time moves us forward, we are constantly worried about what happens next. Of course this will be much easier if your successful future self comes to you and tells you not to worry. This thought is what began my project of trying to access that future self.

To some of you, this may be a generic list of advice that self-help books dish out regularly. But here is the secret that I discovered. These things will be true 5 years from now and even 10 years from now. This could be — and is — a message I will take from my future self. He has chosen to say these things to me through a magical device I found on a nighttime stroll in Central Park.